Severus Snape and the Muggle at Hogwarts
by NovaArbella
Summary: Book 1 in the Hogwarts' Muggle series. Severus Snape makes a new friend in spite of himself... or maybe because of Albus. The formation of a friendship that spans two vastly different worlds isn't easy, but then nothing good ever is. (Original story/Snape's POV/ OC character added without changing canon.)
1. Prologue: Misunderstanding

Prologue:

Misunderstanding

With a twitch of her head, Brie Waters glanced over toward Severus Snape. He was one of the most deliberate and careful men she knew. That was part of his appeal to her. She knew he would tell you exactly what was on his mind, no pampering, no sugar coating, even if what he was saying was unpleasant. She could depend on him for that and appreciated it's value, as long as he kept at least a little bit of a hold on his snarky tongue. She knew all too well the rarity of people who would talk straight all the time.

It was because of that fact that she asked him to repeat whatever it was that he had just muttered, as she hadn't caught it. The birds out on the school grounds were loud and practically drowning out his voice, which was usually fairly low and even in the first place. For some reason, whatever he'd just said, he'd pitched his tone even softer and lower, almost like he didn't actually want her to hear it.

* * *

He was unnerved by what he had just revealed and couldn't meet her eyes. He didn't just go blurting out his private thoughts like that. What was wrong with him? Turning his head away, he let his hair swing forward to cover his face. 'Why did I say that?' he internally berated himself.

And why had he? Was it the warm spring breeze rustling through the leaves of the tree they were sitting under? There was something about the way it shifted her hair and made the curls dance around her face and brush against her cheek, so that he had the urge to reach over and pull one straight so he could let go and see it spring back to a coil again, as she so often did while deep in thought. Perhaps it was finally having someone near his own age to talk to, who didn't know anything about his past, who was a witty conversationalist to boot. Or was it the way the sun slanted over her face lighting up the deep blue of her sharp eyes right before she closed them and leaned comfortably into the tree? It could have been the feeling of having someone to spend time with who was willing to look past his prickly exterior. Maybe it was the blades of grass tickling at her bare feet as she flexed and curled her toes, like a cat stretching in the sun. He couldn't recall ever seeing any other professor at Hogwarts barefoot on the grounds and something about that, coupled with her bright purple painted toenails, tickled him in a way very few things did.

It could have been any of those things, or a dozen others. In truth, he enjoyed spending time with her despite the fact that it could sometimes make him feel confused and guilty. It was something he thought he would never ever admit to anyone, much less blurt out to her, but he had. He wasn't used to having a friend to talk to. His last experience with a friend of the opposite sex hadn't gone that well. And this one here was a Muggle. It was still hard for him to accept that he could want to spend time with her. But she was so smart...and so pretty, and she had a way of looking at things that intrigued him.

He could feel color seeping into his cheeks and was appalled at himself all over again. 'How am I going to fix this?' he wondered, still hiding behind his hair and refusing to meet her eyes.

* * *

"Severus?" she asked again.

Tilting her head and leaning forward, she reached out her hand, meaning to brush the hair from his face so she could see his eyes. She liked his eyes, the blackness of them. They held secrets that she was sure he had never told a soul, and probably never would and that was fine with her. She had her own secrets and never begrudged others their own.

He was still hard for her to read; their friendship was fairly new and could still be awkward, but she'd found that this was the best way to judge what was on his mind. On days like this, though, when he suddenly turned twitchy and elusive, she usually had worse luck.

* * *

He knew what she was trying to do and looked sharply away. It unnerved him when she would look directly into his eyes, as if she could see past them and into his thoughts. Sometimes it would remind him of his days as a Death Eater, when the Dark Lord would probe his mind, looking for any and all details of whatever it was Severus had been sent to witness, research, or uncover. The thing that unnerved him most about it, though, was that while the Dark Lord had never been able to see what Severus choose to hide, somehow the longer he and Brie knew each other, the more this Muggle woman was increasingly able to read him.

Right now he didn't want that, he wanted to ignore what he'd just said and continue on as if nothing had happened. He'd spent her first year at the school stubbornly ignoring her and insulting her in turns, and her second year awkwardly trying to disregard his past behavior and beliefs, while also trying to sort out his conflicted Muggle feelings. Now they were in the middle of her third year as a professor and they'd finally wandered into a place where they both felt comfortable enough around each other to have real significant chats and the occasional friendly debate. He didn't really want that to end because he could be such a sod.

* * *

"Fine!" she spat, suddenly angry.

He flinched, but she didn't care. He must have made another of his snide Muggle jokes, just when she was so sure that he'd fallen out of that annoying habit. This was always what he did when he slipped up and said something snide about her heritage out loud. Well, she wasn't going to be his Muggle punching bag. If he still harbored his dislike of Muggles then he could just leave her be and let her spend her time with people who didn't care if she had magic or not.

"Just...fine," She pushed herself up, pulled on her sandals, and looked down at him. "You know where to find me if you want me," she shot over her shoulder as she swiftly turned and walked off muttering under her breath about how some people had a lot of nerve, seeking out others and making them think they wanted to be friends when all they really wanted to do was insult them.

It had started out to be such a pleasant early spring day. She'd pushed her windows wide open and decided on the spot to go for a walk. She'd even dug out the sandals that she was wearing now, so she could slip them off when no one was looking and secretly run around the lush green grass barefoot.

On her way down to the front doors, she'd run into Severus and had impulsively asked if he'd like to come out with her. If she had known it would end this way, she would have stopped at the friendly wave they'd shared and saved herself this annoyance. At least then she wouldn't be stalking around, muttering to herself.

"I will never understand that man," she snorted.

She just couldn't pin him down. Once she'd chipped away a little at the walls he had built up around himself, she found that one minute he was passive and shy, while the next he could be the snarkiest, most outspoken person she knew. She was aware of his reputation around the school and had experienced it first hand more than once, but over time she'd found that there was more than that, just under the surface... and then there were days like today, where he apparently lived up to every nasty bit of whispered notoriety.

A few students glance at her oddly as they pass. Suddenly realizing that she wasn't muttering as quietly as she thought, she switched gears and smiled and nodded toward them. Faces friendly again, they smile back. With a sigh, Brie continued up to the castle doors, relieved that she'd checked herself quickly. All she needed today would be to have someone see her acting odd and thinking that it was because she was a Muggle, not because she was just a person who was mildly upset. It annoyed her that she had to be careful about things like that. She was still sometimes shocked by the apparent lack of Muggle contact many of the students seemed to have. So much so that some regarded them as practically another species.

* * *

Severus sadly watched her retreating form, still yelling at himself in his head. 'You are a right prat, Severus. What did you say that was so bad? It's not as if you accidentally insulted her again, or confessed some hidden, burning love!'

Assuming she'd thought this was a case of the former, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes before getting to his feet and starting across the grounds, all the while wondering what was wrong with him. His self admonishments had just raised a good question in his mind. The latter was something he'd wondered briefly about once or twice before feeling guilty and pushing the thoughts away.

Did he love her? No... he didn't think so... this friendship didn't feel like it had with Lily. There was no underlying, hidden feelings... that he could tell. ...Well, there was still that lingering little bit of shame, but he really was trying to get over that. He liked spending time with her, he liked talking to her and listening to her, he even missed her when she went home during the summer and looked forward to seeing her again in the fall. But was that love? He didn't think so. That was the beginning of good friendship...wasn't it? He was just getting old feelings of friendship and secret love mixed up with this new friendship because she was a she...wasn't he?

Definitely, probably, maybe. He sighed at his thoughts. Things had been so much easier when he just had his classes to teach and the schools hallways to prowl, and points to remove from dunderhead students.

Besides all that though, even if he did love her, he probably wouldn't act on it. _'Story of my life,'_ he interrupted his own thoughts before scowling while ignoring himself. She still wore a wedding ring though her husband had died several years before Severus had even met her. Even though she said she only wore it as a reminder now, Severus felt that there was something deeper in that gesture than she would admit. She didn't talk about him much, and that was also telling.

Doubly besides all that, he already loved someone else. Even after all these years, he still loved a dead woman who had chosen someone else.

* * *

Trying to get her mind off of Severus' behavior, Brie glanced around the grounds and up toward the school, remembering the first time she'd seen it. Before she'd come, Albus had told her it was a castle, but the idea just hadn't sunk in or really even registered until she'd been standing in front of it. Once inside, she'd been dumbstruck.

Though she still sometimes felt out of place, or sometimes like a sideshow, she still liked it at Hogwarts and was amazed by something new and magical everyday. Even three years into her stint as a professor of... Muggle stuff -her class was listed on the course schedules as Muggle-Led Studies because they had to call it something and it was hard to label since the class covered a very wide variety of subjects- her luck at being able to even be at the school still struck her at odd moments. Even if she wasn't a professor of magic and her classes were completely elective, there were still a good amount of students who wanted to learn from her. Albus had made it very clear when she started that she had full carte-blanch over her class content. He'd very vaguely told her to teach them about Muggles and what Muggles learn.

_'What Muggles learn',_ she had thought to herself, highly amused at the time, 'where do I start?'

Her amusement had run out quickly, as it really had been a conundrum for her at the beginning of it all. With just a little questioning she had promptly figured out that each student had different educational backgrounds because, apparently in the Wizarding world, some parents sent their kids to Muggle schools until they were old enough for Hogwarts and some didn't, opting instead for home schooling until age eleven. It made for an interesting mix of students, some who had come into contact with the Muggle world, and some who essentially hadn't.

Eventually she had figured it all out, the solution being a lot of individual attention and personalized assignments, which made her grateful for her small class sizes. After the first few rocky weeks of trial and error, classes seemed to go well. She tended to come into a class with a loose idea of what she wanted to get across and let things go from there. Most of the time she would cover a lot of scientific subjects, as science was her strong suit and she held a PhD in Toxinology and a Masters in Herpetology, which helped lend credence to her career as a nature film documentary host and a venomous reptile handler. It also ensured that she was taken seriously in the medical research world, in which she dabbled whenever she could, in her home lab.

She'd had to step completely away from venom research in order to have enough time to teach at Hogwarts. It had been a bittersweet decision to trade research for magic, but so far she didn't have very many regrets, especially since she'd pretty much just switched from studying venom to studying magic, and she quickly found that she enjoyed teaching very much.

The students were always full of questions, no matter what subject they happened to be studying, and everything always just seemed to get covered. She'd learned right away that a general overview of what they would be studying next and a brief question and answer period to start with helped immensely in guiding her lesson plans and assignments. They might spend a few weeks on one subject and only a few days on another but the kids always left class richer in knowledge and with a better understanding of Muggles and Muggle culture.

Brie assumed that it must have been what Albus had wanted, because he seemed very pleased by her students progress. She still couldn't help being glad that the regular Muggle Studies class was still offered and that her own class had no OWL or NEWT exams in the fifth and seventh years. She gave regular tests to her students to make sure they were all on track and absorbing information, and that was good enough for all concerned. Whatever his logic, Brie had learned that Albus never did anything for no reason or half assed, so she was always sure to use her whole ass when teaching his 'pet class' as some of the professors called it.

When she had first started, the students... were students. They weren't sure of her, but they had elected to be there and were excited to learn, or maybe just excited to meet a Muggle, so all was well at the start of her new venture. After her first few weeks, Brie thought she could understand why Albus had wanted the students to have a better understanding of Muggles. Even the official Muggle Studies professor had their information a little off the mark. A little wizardy, you might say. Brie also disliked how the official class studied Muggles like they were some interesting exhibit in a zoo. When she'd seen how the class was run, it had given her a lot of direction in how she wanted to teach her own.

One of the first things she had done was to treat it like a class she herself might have taken while in school. Her students didn't so much study Muggles, as study what Muggles studied, and in a way that made it seem normal, and just like any other class. She mostly achieved the effect by avoiding the use of the words 'Muggle', 'witch', 'wizard', and 'magic' in her lectures, and sometimes in her questions. She was also particular about how the kids worded their own questions and answers. It was amazing what differences such small omissions could make.

Like the students in her classes, most of the professors had been nice to her when she started, though there had been a few who seemed not to like the idea of any Muggle at the school. Severus had fairly obviously been one of those, so for almost her entire first year, he and Brie had barely voluntarily spoken. The few times they did converse were short and to the point, almost terse. She'd sensed an animosity from Severus and had tried to keep to herself where he'd been concerned. It hadn't been hard to pick up on, with all the glares he'd sent her way and his snippy little comments.

For some reason though, it seemed like Albus had other ideas on how much contact his professors should have and had continually tried drawing them both into conversations.

* * *

Unbeknownst to Brie, Albus Dumbledore just happened to catch a glimpse of her out his office windows as she marched in from the grounds. Earlier, out that same window, he'd noticed his two youngest professors meet unexpectedly, and wander off together. If Brie's stalking pace now was any indication, something had gone awry between the two between then and now. With a chuckle and a shake of his head he hurried down to the Great Hall, hoping to beat Brie there so that he could wave her in to join him, and perhaps get a feel for what had gone wrong, or at least take her mind off it. She and Severus seemed sometimes to be stuck in a wheel of misunderstanding as they tested the waters in the formation of a truly unique friendship, which he himself had had no small hand in helping along.

When Brie had come to the school, Albus watched the two vastly different professors contact from a distance and after awhile decided that it was time to take matters into his own hands. Severus, understandably, harbored a very bad impression of Muggles, but Albus felt that the time had come for him to realize that not all Muggles were horrible. He'd been almost positive that Ms. Waters could teach the snarky Slytherin that, in fact, some Muggles were quite amazing. And even if she couldn't, he couldn't in good conscience continue to allow Severus to treat Brie as he did.

On and off over the years he'd heard of Gabrielle Waters, almost always during his contact with Muggle-born students and parents. Many times, as Albus let the newly informed parents have a little bit of private conversation time in some other part of the house, Brie would be chattering away on the telly. He found that his attention would be drawn to her voice and the way she imparted information about her subject. He noticed that she had the special ability to hold children's focus as well. When he'd come up with his plan to expose the students not just to Muggle culture, but also real Muggle knowledge, some further research had convinced him that Gabrielle Waters was just the Muggle he needed. She was well educated, well traveled, and didn't seem daunted by overwhelming tasks. In addition, she seemed like she possessed an open mind and a resilient spirit.

Finding, befriending, and convincing her to essentially change everything about her life had been a long and challenging process, all things considered at the time. She'd had some unfortunate events in her recent past that made the whole process more difficult than he'd anticipated, but he'd patiently succeeded, as he had with almost everything he truly set his mind to.

Her first few weeks at the school had not only confirmed that he'd been correct in his assumptions, but he also discovered that he might have inadvertently brought in someone who could crack through Severus' Muggle issues as well. It wasn't something he'd intended, but he knew how to take advantage of a situation when it presented itself.

Brie was always keen to learn about magic and the wizarding world, especially when she had first arrived, and Albus never failed to entertain her with stories about great wizards and magical creatures, and different kinds of spells or potions, and what they did. He increasingly started to turn their talks to potions, at least once a conversation leaning out over the table to call for Severus's opinion, taking care to point out that he was Hogwarts' Potion Master after all, and was therefore more qualified to answer those types of questions.

Although he never looked happy about it, Severus would always give his opinion and sourly answer any query Brie had. Whenever Severus would try to catch his eye during these short conversations, Albus made sure not to be looking his way, while chuckling to himself as he watched from the corner of his eye. He had what he liked to think of as his 'ace in the hole' in the formation of a new friendship that he felt would do his Potions Master some good. Severus kept to himself too much, if you asked Albus. Having someone around on staff who didn't remember Severus' schoolboy days would be good for him.

Of course, he was going to need a little push, Severus being Severus. Albus was perfectly willing to give him that little push, or a big kick, whatever was needed. He had obviously researched Ms. Waters before contacting her about teaching at Hogwarts and he had found out some very interesting things about her. So he waited and watched as the contact between Brie and Severus became slightly less stiff over the course of her first year as professor. There were occasional mornings when they even greeted each other before sitting down. Brie always initiated the greetings, but Severus always responded. Albus considered that a good sign.

One Saturday morning, toward the end of the school year, he had leaned out over the table to talk to Severus.

_"Severus, I don't believe I have mentioned this before. Are you aware that Professor Waters has an interest in reptiles? Don't you have a similar interest?"_

_He knew his eyes twinkled as he said this, knowing full well that Severus did have some interest in the subject. Most Potions Masters did and this particular Potions Master was a Slytherin besides._

_Both Severus and Brie froze, mid motion, staring at Albus in surprise. Severus reaching for his glass and Brie with a forkful of eggs halfway to her open mouth. Severus shot Albus a pithy look, which Brie missed and Albus ignored, and said, "It's more an interest in the skin, scales, fangs, and venom, Albus," with such finality that Albus knew he'd been hoping that it would end the conversation right there, but Albus was made of tougher stuff than that._

_"Oh come now, Severus. You must be at least a little curious."_

The look Severus shot at him then could have melted glass.

* * *

Brie threw her weight into the giant front doors as she entered the castle, noticing that lunch was being served when she glanced toward the Great Hall. She had an internal debate as to whether or not she should get something to eat, since she didn't always have the best appetite when upset. Albus noticed her in the doorway and gestured for her to come take her usual seat next to him. With a shrug Brie entered the Hall, hoping a chat with Albus would take her mind off of things for awhile. He looked a little out of breath for some reason, and she noticed that he didn't have any food on his plate yet. He must have just sat down himself.

The twinkle in Albus' eye as he greeted her, coupled with her brain still worrying over Severus, suddenly reminded her of the day Albus had informed Severus that she had an interest in snakes. At the time it had seemed very sudden and random, but now that she knew Albus better, she suspected that he'd had an ulterior motive, especially because she'd seen that twinkle a dozen other times since then, and it always meant Albus was up to something that amused him. She took her seat and began to load up her plate, still dwelling on the memory as she let Albus' chattering small talk ring in her ears.

_Brie was slightly shocked that Albus had basically announced that her Muggle career was not what it would appear to be. Up to that point the other professors seemed to assume that she had previously been a professor somewhere else in the Muggle world, and she'd been fine with that. She'd initially been worried that people would know who she was and it would instantly label her within the school as not just 'The Muggle', but as 'That Muggle'', so when that didn't happen right away, she felt a little better._

_In her classroom, if she wanted to use her real life experience as an example, she had been telling stories as if they had happened to a friend or someone else she knew, or occasionally as if she'd seen them on TV. Only a few of the Muggle born students had recognized her from TV and Brie had quietly asked them to keep the information to themselves until people stopped looking at her like a sideshow act simply because she wasn't a witch. Luckily most of them understood, and a few even ventured to say that they rarely spoke of Muggle things while in the school because it made them feel awkward when they had to explain what things were to the students who had no idea. It was something that helped start a bond between Brie and several of her students._

_When she'd heard Severus' snide and clipped response to Albus' query, Brie bristled and turned to him, unable to keep her temper in check so early in the morning, before she'd had enough coffee to think straight. His tone had clearly informed her that he had absolutely no interest in what went on in a Muggle's personal life. She just bet she could prove him wrong._

_"What a coincidence, I also have a special interest in venom. Different from your interests, I'm sure," she sniped, after which she turned away and finally managed to eat the forkful of eggs Albus' declaration had interrupted. She wasn't surprised when Severus was unable to help himself and had asked what she meant. Smugly satisfied that she now was answering a question and not simply volunteering information, she continued on, feeling more in control of the situation._

_"I assume your interest in snake venom is strictly its use in potions?" she asked, suddenly already sorry she'd been unable to bite her tongue. She had nothing to prove to the sour professor and didn't know why she was bothering to say anything. She absolutely hated that he was able to make her feel this irrational. Dealing with him was like being on a roller coaster._

_Severus answered in the affirmative, so she had no choice but to continue. "My interest is more in anti-venom. I extract venom from venomous snakes and it is used it to make anti-venom. I travel the world collecting and releasing various species for my facility and I make educational films while I'm at it."_

_She was used to telling people what she did for a living, and she always did it quickly and very matter of fact. Then she would wait for the questions. They always came after the first initial shocked expression. The most common ones were, "You're kidding right?" and "Have you ever been bitten?" The answers were no and no, and Severus followed the script so perfectly that she couldn't help but smile._

_Of course, he used the phrase, "Surely you aren't serious," and she answered, "Why would I lie? And the name is Gabrielle, not Shirley," and he rolled his eyes, but it was close enough for her. When he asked her why she was smiling and she told him, he smiled himself. A rare smile, albeit a small one._

_The difference even such a small smile made was impressive. He no longer looked sullen and withdrawn, his lips curved, his eyes crinkled a bit and he looked almost happy for a moment. With a raised eyebrow, she shot him an ironic look. The smile disappeared. His sullen professor manner came down like a shutter as he hurriedly stood, making some excuse about checking a potion before sweeping out of the Great Hall with his robes billowing out behind him._

_"Don't mind Severus," Albus said to her "We don't let him out of the dungeon often. He really is a decent fellow once you get to know him." With a smile, he rose from his seat to make an announcement, leaving Brie to wonder if he was right._

Brie shook herself out of her reverie when she heard Albus saying something about falling out of a tree. "Excuse me, Albus?" she asked, already having a vague idea of what he was asking her.

"I said I heard the Weasley twins telling the most animated story involving you, a tree, and gravity. I can't believe it to be true." He looked at her expectantly.

He loved to hear stories of her 'Muggle adventures', as he and most of the rest of the school called them. Although technically too young for her class until the following school year, the twins had asked if they might occasionally sit in on some of her lectures when they had free periods. She'd agreed after clearing the idea with Albus and Minerva.

"Knowing the twins, I'm sure the facts have been... expanded on," she began with a smile and proceeded to tell him the rest of the story as she had once told Severus, and yesterdays morning class, which, coincidentally, the twins had sat in on. As she did, she made a mental note not to tell them anything she wouldn't want bellowed across the Great Hall.

* * *

Cursing his pathetic social skills, and wishing he had more experience with matters of friendship, Severus entered the castle and thought about going straight to the dungeons and his private quarters even though lunch was being served. He chanced one glance into the Great Hall and saw Brie there, talking to Minerva and Albus. Albus was shaking with laughter at the story she was telling him and even Minerva was smiling. Severus was momentarily amazed at how quickly she could change gears. You wouldn't have known by looking that anything was bothering her.

Severus watched her animated hand gestures and decided that she was probably telling the story of when she had been filming a documentary in Brazil and had fallen out of a tree while trying to catch a snake. He was amazed that she could take a story that would normally be told and taken very seriously and make people laugh about it, and not feel bad about laughing.

He remembered the end of the previous school year, her second at the school as a professor, when she had told that story to him. It had still been the beginning of their friendship and he had asked about the very small hitch in her gait that he had noticed since the first day she'd been at Hogwarts. It was probably one of the very first truly personal questions he'd asked her. Until then he'd stuck to safe questions about her job outside the school; learning many things about world travel, documentary making, and animal handling.

_"It was awful Severus," she said with laughter in her eyes. "We had been tramping around the rain forest for days without finding so much as a lizard. So when I saw the snake, I shot straight up that tree without even blinking an eye. The snake was already almost a third of the way up, but I knew I could get it. I can climb like a monkey and I caught up with it in no time."_

_"One second I had this beautiful boa in my hand, and the very next there was a horrible snapping sound as the branch I was standing on gave way. All I remember was falling like I was in slow motion, trying to grab at anything I could with my one free hand, because I was holding the boa to my chest to protect it. It felt like I cracked my butt on almost every branch on the way down. My crew said I landed with an almighty thump, held up the snake, yelled, "I still got it!" then passed out," she finished with a chuckle._

_Concerned, he asked if she had gotten badly hurt. She answered in the affirmative, saying something about her hips having to be pinned back together and how she was very lucky she could still walk at all, let alone walk almost normally and without the assistance of a crutch or cane._

_"I don't remember anything until a few days later when I woke up in the hospital," she stated when he'd asked how she had survived the pain. "By then they had me on so many pain killers I don't know what was real and what wasn't."_

_She didn't seem to want to talk about that particular part of the story, so instead, he asked if anyone else knew about her fall. With a forced laugh she said, "Of course! It was all caught on film. It was practically the only 'good' footage from that whole trip. The production company had to make money on it somehow, so they sold it to a blooper TV program in America that uses that clip when they open the show. Lots of people have seen it. At least once every few weeks back home someone runs up pointing and saying 'oh my God! It's that chick who fell out of the tree on that show!' I'm just hoping for the day when they decide to change the opening, then I should get some relief from it."_

_With a wry smile she added, "It's really discouraging to be known more for that than all the rest of the documentaries combined. I actually have seen the footage and it WAS pretty funny. I looked like a crash test dummy holding a short piece of rope. I didn't really hit that many branches on the way down, but I hit enough They obviously don't show the end where it's apparent I'm hurt, so... you know, it has comedic value. I signed off on the use of it to help pay the medical bills."_

Severus shook himself back to the present and continued on to his rooms. He wasn't hungry anyway. A foul mood was coming on and even glaring at a group of first years hard enough to send them scurrying off did nothing to raise his spirits. He entered his rooms and flopped down in his favorite chair to think.

Not two minutes later he was up and pacing the length of the room with long, jerky strides. He couldn't quiet his mind, and he couldn't think clearly either. Hoping that he could at least take advantage of his agitated energy, he strode to his desk to mark essays. He had a feeling it was going to be a long weekend.

* * *

As Brie was telling Albus her story, she noticed Severus pause at the door for a moment, then walk away. She sighed inwardly, wondering again what his problem was. They had become fairly good friends over the course of this year, her third as a Professor at Hogwarts. She just couldn't understand why he couldn't see that, fundamentally, Muggles weren't very much different than witches and wizards. Of course there were differences, but there were also a lot of sames. Focusing on just one or the other pretty much assured you'd reinforce your own opinion of whichever you favored.

Quickly finishing up her tale, she excused herself saying that she had some essays to mark. As she left and headed toward her rooms, she realized that she really did have essays to mark, so she changed course and headed to her classroom instead. _'Better to get it done now,'_ she thought to herself, _'anyway, it will keep me from brooding.'_

Not having as many students as the other professors- although each year the number did increase- it never took her very long to mark papers. After she was done, she looked around the classroom for something else to keep her hands and mind busy. Unable to find anything, she decided to go back to her rooms and read for awhile.

Some time later she tossed aside her book having finished it with surprising speed. _'Shoot'_ she thought to herself annoyed at having finished so quickly because she didn't have any other new books. 'Now what am I going to do?'

She figured she might as well change and go for a run. Running always cleared her mind and there was still some daylight left.

As she walked through the entrance hall she wondered again why Severus would seek her out for company if he really disliked Muggles so much. Shaking her head and trying not to think about it anymore, she jogged down to the path around the lake where she liked to run. Trying not to think about something seemed to be the best way to ensure that you endlessly did.

**AN: Hello, hope you enjoyed this chapter. Let me know with a little review so that it keeps me motivated to keep updating.**


	2. Chapter 1: First Impressions

1- First Impressions

Severus finished marking essays and cast around for something else to do. He had perhaps given out a few more D's than he may have if he had been in a somewhat better mood. And if he had been in that slightly better mood he most likely wouldn't have marked that one essay T. But he wasn't in a good mood, so it couldn't be helped.

Finding nothing that would hold his interest in his rooms, he decided to head to his classroom and start preparing ingredients and instructions for the coming week, hoping that the activity would continue to distract him. Unfortunately, the familiar tasks proved to be too routine and, as he was sorting through doxy wings and belladonna, wondering which little dunderhead had mixed the doxy wings and lacewing flies, his thoughts drifted to Brie again.

He hadn't liked the idea of a Muggle professor and an American Muggle professor at that. He could remember thinking to himself that Albus could have at least stayed in his own country if he was going to bring a Muggle into the school, but no matter what Severus had said and how much he and a handful of other professors objected, nothing would change Albus' mind.

"_Severus," Albus said with infuriating calm, after listening to the many arguments he had put forth. "Who better to teach the students what Muggles know and by extension more about Muggles, than a Muggle? The students need a more accurate view about Muggle life. I feel it is very important." _

"_But an American Muggle, Albus?" he growled, not wanting to give in easily, taking one last stab out of pure stubbornness._

_Albus fixed him with a stern look. "This American Muggle woman has been through more than many people, wizard or Muggle, have in their entire lives, Severus. She has an amazing capacity to heal and learn and live. I feel that that is also very important. You could learn something from her, if you let yourself."_

_Severus lapsed into thoughtful silence. _

"_Lemon drop?" Albus asked brightly, interrupting his thought pattern. Severus declined. _

So, Dr. Gabrielle S. Waters had come to the school, becoming the first Muggle ever to set foot in Hogwarts. Severus wasn't sure what kind of spell or enchantment Albus had put on her to ensure that she could find and see the school, but assumed he had found some way, since she hadn't yet wandered off never to be heard from again.

He'd had little to no interest in the subject she had been brought in to teach and nothing to say to her, so before even laying eyes on Brie, Severus had resolved to avoid her as much as possible. Fate liked to spoil his plans, so of course Albus had seated her between the two of them at mealtimes. Severus could see the logic in it, he supposed. The Muggle had many questions in the initial few weeks of her employment and Albus enjoyed filling her in as well as hearing bits about her life so it made sense that he would keep her close.

Severus had stubbornly stuck to his resolve and studiously ignored her after their initial meeting when Albus had introduced her to the staff. He and the other staff members had been gathered in the professor's meeting room waiting for Albus. They all knew he was bringing the new Muggle professor to this gathering to meet everyone, so as they waited most discussed what they knew about Muggles and some even made bets as to what kinds of questions she was bound to ask and if she would even be able to comprehend the magic that went on there.

"_I've seen what Muggles think magic is," Pomona said to Poppy. "Not even close to actual magic really. I saw a Muggle magic show once. The man on stage was pulling rabbits out of hats and flowers out of his sleeve and coins out of peoples ears, and the people watching were oohing and awwing and there were lights flashing and music pumping. It was all so garish and... fake," she decided._

"_Well," said the ever positive Poppy, "I'm sure Albus didn't hire an idiot and he has probably filled her in a bit by now anyway. We will just have to see how it goes."_

"_What do you think she might have been doing before this?" Filius muttered to Minerva._

"_Albus didn't say directly, but he did mention something about teaching people about wildlife, so I assume she must have been some sort of Muggle science teacher," Minerva answered. "What I am wondering is, will she even be able to see the school?"_

"_Oh, I don't expect that would be a problem," Filius waved the question away. "I'm sure if anyone could find or invent a way around that, it's Albus."_

_Just then the door opened and everyone turned toward it expectantly. Albus stepped into the room followed by the newest professor. "I'm sure everyone is pleased to meet the newest member of the staff, Gabrielle Waters," he said without preamble or flourish. "As we are all well aware, she is a Muggle and comes to us from America. She has a unique and eclectic set of skills and range of knowledge and is here to teach any student who wants a deeper understanding of Muggles, Muggle culture, and Muggle knowledge."_

_Brie smiled, obviously very nervous and out of place. "Hello everyone, I'm happy to meet you all," she said as she gripped her hands together and twisted her fingers around each other. "I hope we get to know each other better throughout the year..." she trailed off, obviously unsure of what to say next._

_Albus came to her rescue then, by asking everyone to take their seats so they could start the staff meeting and talk about the upcoming term. Everyone shot looks over in Brie's direction throughout the meeting and fell silent whenever she asked or answered a question. As the meeting wore on, the professors started to get used to her, but she just seemed to get more and more nervous and jittery. Severus assumed it was because no one was really bothering to hide the fact they were watching her and waiting for something. He doubted anyone really knew what they were waiting for, but the feeling in the air was almost palpable. _

_Severus studied her from across the table while she wasn't looking. She was small. Not just short - some of the sixth and seventh year students would tower over her - but also almost painfully thin, though she seemed strong. He found himself wondering what would give her that kind of physique. _

_Her hair was a very dark golden kind of amber and it ran down her back in a riot of curls. Her eyes were dark blue and they crinkled when she smiled. The smile seemed to come often and easily despite her obvious discomfort. He studied her face for a few seconds longer, noticing a scattering of golden freckles across her nose and cheeks before her eyes flicked over to him and he coolly turned his attention back to the subject under discussion._

_A few minutes later, she knocked over a glass of water as she nervously reached out for it and jumped up stuttering an embarrassed apology. Without even thinking about it, Severus lifted his wand and vanished the water before it could make its way across the table. Brie froze in place with her mouth open in a small O. She uttered a soft "wow" under her breath. A split second later, she had recovered and regained her seat. There was a different kind of smile on her face and a light in her eye that hadn't been there before. _

_A few of the professors, Severus included, despite his best efforts to the contrary, were impressed by her mild reaction and quick recovery. She also didn't ask how Severus had done the magic and didn't ask to see more. It seemed to comfort some of them. Severus assumed that they, like he, started to realize that some of their initial discomfort around Brie may have stemmed from expecting her to gawk at them and ask to see more 'tricks'._

_Shortly after the water incident Dumbledore wrapped up the meeting and everyone rose to leave while still talking amongst themselves. Severus was almost out the door when Dumbledore called him back. He inwardly cringed and cursed the old wizard, because he knew what was coming next._

"_Severus would you mind showing Professor Waters to her rooms? I need to speak to Minerva before she leaves." With that Albus turned and walked toward Minerva leaving both Brie and Severus staring after him. _

_Brie simply blinked and said with a laugh, "People come and go so quickly here."_

_Severus, being a wizard and, at that point, having never heard of the Wizard of Oz, thought that it was a rather odd thing to say. He'd learn of the story later, and remember, and it would make sense, but at that point, it just rubbed him the wrong way for some reason. He jerked his head toward the direction of the door and said, "This way, then," a bit more sharply than he meant to._

_Brie blinked again at the harshness in his voice and her eyes went cold as she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin slightly, then followed. _

_As they walked down the halls toward her rooms, Severus noticed that he barely had to shorten his stride or slow his pace. He wondered if she always moved so quickly or if she was keeping up with him out of pride; he had noticed her 'prepare' herself before following him. He also noticed the very slight hitch in her step. It seemed that one of her legs didn't stretch out as far as the other would. It didn't seem to give her any real problems, but it did make her gait a bit odd. _

_Glancing sideways, he noticed that she was turning her head rapidly in every direction, trying to take everything in all at once, just like the Muggle born first years. With a roll of his eyes, he gave a snort of derision. How were the students to take this person seriously if she was constantly gawping at everything around her? _

_Even though she'd had a fairly mild reaction, the vanishing spell he'd used earlier had still stopped her in her tracks. He could well imagine what her reaction would be to seeing something bigger. With a scowl he continued to stalk down the halls with the Muggle striding by his side._

_She saw him scowling at her and blushed. "I must look ridiculous. Like a tourist or something," she said, not hesitating to look him right in the eye, seemingly daring him to say something about it. "It's just that I only arrived here a few minutes before that meeting and..." she paused for a second, then broke out in a grin, "I've never seen paintings move before!" she exclaimed. "Look! They can move through the frames into other paintings too, that's just so neat! And I swear those coats of armor move too." She eyed the nearest one suspiciously, which had actually just switched it's sword from one hand to the other, before looking back at him and blushing even deeper. _

_The combination of blushing with an unwavering stare annoyed him further, and his scowl deepened. It clearly started to get to her a little bit. Clearing her throat, she got a hold of herself and said, "I should pay better attention to where you are taking me though. I'd rather not get lost trying to find my way without you." Obviously trying to lighten the mood she continued, "I don't suppose you are in the habit of making middle of the night rescues for silly lost Muggles?" _

_When he didn't respond, she lapsed into a puzzled silence. With a smirk, he assumed that she was used to people who would melt under that sunny attitude and easy smile, but he wasn't one of them. Let her try the charming Muggle act on the other professors. He was suddenly doubly determined to stay out of this Muggle's way. _

"_This is it," he said shortly as he stopped in front of a door halfway down a corridor. There was a painting of a troll to one side of the door, which had no knob._

"_Is that a troll?" she asked, as she pointed to the painting. The troll grunted and pointed stupidly back at her, causing her to jump a bit, then laugh nervously. "That's going to take some getting used to."_

"_Yes it is a troll," Severus answered dryly. _

_After she gave him a dirty look, he watched her survey the door and run her hand over the place where a knob would normally be. She then tried the troll painting, lifting it up and peeking behind. When that didn't work she hesitated a bit, glancing back over her shoulder for a fraction of a second before slowly reaching over to the nearest torch sconce and quickly tugging on it a bit before jerking her arm back down to her side. When nothing happened, she took two steps back, plunked her hands on her hips, cocked her head, and looked for a second longer. _

"_...So, what am I missing here?" she finally grudgingly asked._

_With a sigh, he replied rather nastily, "To enter your rooms you give the troll your password. I assume Dumbledore told you the temporary password?"_

"_Oh yes! I'd already forgotten with all this new...stuff to absorb. He said that he picked out a password that would be easy for a Muggle to remember. It's kind of odd actually." She looked bemused._

_Severus groaned to himself, having a good idea of what Dumbledore's special Muggle password was. "May I venture to guess that the password is lemon drop?" he asked even though he was fairly certain of her answer._

"_Yes!" She looked surprised_

"_If you get to know Albus like most of us do you will find it is not the most subtle of passwords. You should be sure to remember to change it." With that he turned away and said over his shoulder, "I'm sure many of the professors would be glad to help if you should find you need it."_

_He heard her mutter, "Not you though, I see," as he stalked off._

_When he turned the corner, he saw her shake her head, give the troll the password, and enter her rooms. He continued to stalk down to the dungeons, reflecting on what he'd just learned about the Muggle. She seemed totally unremarkable to him and he strengthened his resolve to avoid her._

As Severus finished picking the lacewing flies out of the doxy wings, he made a mental note to give the last class that had worked with these ingredients a little unexpected quiz for his troubles. Having finished the task, he rose and walked out of the classroom. Sometime during his reminiscence he had decided that he was being foolish, just as he had been during that first meeting, when he'd flat out refused to be impressed with Brie, even though she'd shown more insight and ingenuity than he'd expected when she'd been trying to figure out how to open her door.

He and Brie had become good friends this year, hadn't they? She'd understand that he was just a socially awkward sod who didn't always express himself well, wouldn't she? She had before anyway.

Feeling embarrassed all over again for being a git, or a jerk, as Brie might say, he shook it off and went to look for her so he could confess what a jerk he was and hope she wasn't mad at him anymore. He wondered now if she had really gotten angry at him or if she had just seemed angry but he had really hurt her. He thought about it for a moment and decided that he hoped it was the first one. Making her just angry made him feel far less like a git for some reason.

He made himself feel better by taking ten points from a passing Ravenclaw student who was holding a bag of Dungbombs.

She didn't answer when he knocked on her door, so he started toward the entrance hall wondering where she might be. He spotted her as he passed a bank of windows which faced the lake. As he paused to watch for a minute, he found himself glad she was running. It might mean she wouldn't have the energy to be mad anymore. He had reason to know that while it might take quite a bit to get her temper up, once it flared it was formidable. He had only experienced it on one occasion, but it had made an impression.

She had harshly rebuffed him for making snide and disparaging Muggle remarks. He'd never meant them toward her but, she had asked, practically at the top of her lungs, how could he not mean her as well if she was a Muggle? The question had been uncomfortably close to one that Lily had asked him once, when he'd tried to apologize for calling her a Mudblood. It had shaken him when Brie unknowingly drew the comparison, causing him to spend several sleepless nights considering the implications.

Knowing how much it took to anger her, he felt a guilty pang. He still hadn't sorted out all his thoughts and feelings toward her yet, but he knew that he would rather she be his friend than nothing at all. He would figure out his heart and mind eventually. Stepping away from the window, he continued toward the main entrance and out onto the grounds, making his way toward the lake and the best friend he'd had since Lily Evans.

Thinking about Lily made Severus frown. He knew that soon there would be an almost daily reminder of his dearest friend and his oldest enemy running around the castle and that he himself had already played a large role in the shaping of history there. He didn't want to think about the future and his unavoidable role in that particular area right now. He still hadn't sorted out all his thoughts and feelings there yet either.

_'One thing at a time,'_ he thought to himself. There was nothing he could do now about Harry Potter's inevitable arrival at Hogwarts. _'I'll deal with him in the future and Lily is in the past.' _ It had become such a familiar feeling, he barely registered the fist squeezing at his heart when he thought about Lily. _'Now is for the present.'_ He slowed his pace spotting Brie again as he started down the hill to the lake.


	3. Chapter 2: On the Road

2- On the Road

As she ran, the wind whipped over Brie's face, helping to clear her mind. At some point during this run she'd had the sudden thought that perhaps Severus hadn't insulted her like she had assumed. She went over the conversation they had been having in her head and didn't really see any type of anti-Muggle statement that could have come out of it. Thinking back even harder, she supposed that the look on his face should have been a dead giveaway as well. He'd looked uncomfortable before he'd gone and hidden behind his curtain of hair, not malicious.

With a grimace, she chided herself because she knew he really had been trying to break the bad habit. She had absolutely lost it on him one day when she had gotten fed up with all his offhand Muggle bashing. It hadn't been directed specifically at her since they had slowly become friendlier over her second year at Hogwarts, but it was still very hurtful and frankly, pretty ignorant in her opinion. She had been unable to hold her temper about it for very long.

He'd had a much stronger reaction that she'd thought he'd have. Suddenly, he'd been shaken like she'd never seen him before, and had been pale as he'd hastily apologized and hurried away. After avoiding her for several days, he'd finally come to her and sheepishly apologized again, while trying to keep his hands out of his pockets and his head held high. It was quite the sight, Severus Snape squirming in front of her, obviously trying to keep his dignity intact. She'd hastily accepted his apology in order to make him feel better and to stop his uncharacteristic wriggling, which freaked her out.

Now, as they were nearing the end of her third year as a professor, it had been months since Severus had even slipped up with any negative comments about Muggles. She guessed that he didn't even really think very badly about them anymore, but couldn't really be sure. He'd switched from snide comments to curious questions at some point and had stopped making sour faces whenever she would mention Muggle things. It was possible he still harbored some dislike, but as long as he kept it to himself, she didn't very much care. Everyone was entitled to an opinion no matter how stupid, and she was pretty sure that she would be able to truly change his mind over enough time anyway.

So she continued to run while she tried to figure out what had really gone on that morning. She knew that he was a very proud, but private person who almost never revealed anything to anyone. Any little bits of personal information she'd gleaned over their acquaintance had been hard won on her part. Kind of like prizing open a reluctant oyster. Whatever it was that he had mumbled must have embarrassed him and she had gone and kicked him while he was down.

"Jackass," she muttered to herself as she picked up her pace, noticing several students heading for the main entrance. She figured that it must be dinnertime, but wasn't ready to go in yet, especially with the new revelation that she might be the one in the wrong, so she continued on her path around the lake.

As she ran, she thought back to a night about a month before the end of her first year at Hogwarts. A night when she had been feeling very alone and blue. Most of the professors were still cautious around her. No one but Snape had been outwardly unkind, but the covert looks out of the corners of eyes were getting old and she also wasn't really being invited for tea and cozy chats either. Well, Albus had her up to his office for tea once a week to make sure she was getting along OK, and while it was nice, it wasn't really a blossoming friendship or anything; the British just had tea with literally every occasion.

Mostly she had spent her free time in the library reading about whatever caught her attention, trying to draw connections between magic and science, filling an entire notebook full of questions and theories. It had been a lonely few months. Unable to sleep, she had decided to take a walk around the castle. She considered it the night when she and Severus had first started down the road to friendship. It was at least the night when he had stopped being so openly hostile to her at any rate. .

_She stared at the paintings as she slowly walked down the hallways. They still stunned her and she found herself wondering if that amazement would ever wear off. She hoped not. Whenever there were students and other professors close by she would be sure to try not to pay attention of course, but when no one was around she just couldn't help it._

_She was halfway down a stairway, meaning to go to her classroom to set up for the morning, when the staircase shifted and slowly swung away from her goal. She hated when they did that. At least she knew her way around well enough after almost a full school year, but in the beginning it had been unpleasant and she had gotten lost often._

_Luckily it stopped on a landing that led to the main staircase down to the Entrance Hall. Happy because there was an alternate way back to her classroom, she headed down and across the foyer, glancing into the Great Hall as she went, grinning at the star-strewn enchanted ceiling. After a brief internal debate, she decided against going in and laying on one of the tables to study it for awhile. She'd done that for about an hour the previous week and worried that if she did too often, or for too long, someone would wander in and find her 'acting odd'._

_As she was passing through the Entrance Hall, she heard a door close softly. Looking around she noticed a door next to the main staircase. She had just passed by it as she'd been talking herself out of staring at the ceiling. Puzzled, she headed in the direction and put her hand on the doorknob. There was probably a student who was out after hours and it really was part of her job to investigate._

_The door opened into a long hallway. About halfway down a small girl stood twitching her fingers over a painting of fruit in a bowl. Brie was fairly sure the little girl was a second year Slytherin. She still had a baby face, and the trim on her robes was green. The girl was concentrating hard on her task, moving from one piece of fruit to another, so Brie was able to move up close to her._

_"Honey, what are you doing?" she asked softly._

_The girl jumped away from the painting to face her. The poor thing looked terrified and Brie took instant pity on her._

_"Calm down," she said trying to soothe her while still keeping some authority in her voice. "What is your name, and what are you doing?" she asked, with a hint of a smile._

_The girl smiled tentatively back. "My name is Penelope Smalls," she volunteered readily, but seemed reluctant to continue further._

_"And..." Brie prompted._

_"And...some of the girls in my house are daring each other to do... things..." Penelope trailed off, no longer smiling._

_"Things like sneak out after midnight and scratch at a painting?" Brie asked, trying not to show her confusion in case it really was a perfectly normal thing for young witches and wizards to do._

_"This painting leads to the kitchen," Penelope continued reluctantly. "You have to tickle a certain piece of fruit to get in, but no one knew which one."_

_"So they dared you to go and find out?" Brie guessed_

_Penelope nodded and looked at her feet. As she watched her, Brie again took pity and said, "You should head back and tell all the girls to confine the dares to the common room. I am going to have to take points, but since I have never caught you out before I'll make it...umm...ten," she decided, hoping it was an appropriate number of points for the situation. She'd heard other professors taking and giving points, but couldn't for the life of her figure out any rhyme or reason to the numbers. "Go on and try not to get caught by anyone else on the way back."_

_Penelope didn't need to be told twice. She looked up at Brie, mumbled a surprised thanks and was gone in a flash. Brie turned and faced the painting after Penelope left, wondering if what the girl had said was true. Would a Muggle be able to use the magic if it was? She was able to use the troll painting to enter her room, would she be able to make the door to the kitchens open too? She had already watched as Penelope had tickled all but two pieces of fruit. Only the banana and pear remained._

_She reached out her hand, eager to see if the magic would work, and tickled the banana. Nothing happened. Disappointed she reached over to the pear and prepared for further disappointment, but instead it started to giggle and squirm almost as soon as her fingers brushed against it. Brie had to jump back as the painting swung out as if on hinges, to reveal the entrance to the kitchens._

_'That was so cool! ' she thought as she stepped through the doorway and the painting closed behind her. As she looked around, she saw gleaming copper pots and pans hanging from pot racks and four long tables in the middle of the room. The house elves were clustered around the farthest table and were staring back at her. She was grateful that Albus had told her about house elves during one of their more recent conversations. She still didn't know what to say to them, but at least she knew what they were._

_"Don't mind me," Brie finally said after she and the elves had stared at each other for a minute or so, "I found a student trying to get in so I sent her back to her common room, then I...tickled the pear..." she finished lamely, more than a little discomforted by the stares she was still receiving._

_One of the elves approached her cautiously and squeaked out, "Would Miss like anything? Tea perhaps? Or some pumpkin juice?"_

_Brie was startled for a moment at the elf's tiny squeaky voice, and big round eyes. "Oh no, no that's all right," she hastily tried to assure the elf, because it had already scampered over to get the tea pot and several others had come to help. "I don't need anything! I really don't!" She felt uncomfortable in a new way at all the attention the elves were now showing her. Once the first one broke the ice, they all suddenly seemed desperate to do something, anything for her. The elf that had offered her the tea was now bouncing over to a cupboard saying, "We have cakes and cookies too, Miss, yes yes we do."_

_Brie fought the urge to reach out and grab the little elf to make it hold still. "No, really I'm fine. I didn't come in for anything," she said again. "I was just taking a little walk because I couldn't sleep and I found that student. That's all, don't worry." She relaxed as the little elf finally stopped bouncing around. Smiling with relief, she said, "You know, it is kind of funny that I ended up in the kitchen. Back home I sometimes bake cookies on nights I can't sleep."_

_She had only mentioned it so that she had something to say to cut the sudden silence, but it started the little elf scampering all over the kitchen again, grabbing bowls and spoons and whisks and ingredients as it went and putting them all on a long work table. "Miss can certainly bake her own cookies if Miss wants! Lully will bring Miss whatever she needs!" the elf exclaimed as she put eggs on the table as well._

_Brie, extremely distressed at this point, tried to assure the elf that she hadn't meant for her to whip into action and set up a baking station at one in the morning. "Uhh...Lully, please stop...I didn't mean...no, no don't, it's OK, really..."_

_Nothing Brie said stopped Lully and almost before she could blink everything needed to bake chocolate chip cookies stood on the table before her. In frustration she brought her hands to her head and fisted them in her hair, pulling a little to ground herself with the pain. Her mind spun as she watched the elf dash here and there. She didn't know what to do and wondered if she should just step back out the way she'd come in. It seemed rude, but surely she wasn't going to bake up a batch of cookies just because of an increasing large misunderstanding, was she?_

_She looked at the ingredients and the utensils the elf had laid out and suddenly thought to herself,_ 'Why not? Everything is here and you can't sleep anyway. It will probably even help you get to sleep. It does at home.' _Having decided to go for it, she rolled up her sleeves and started to measure out flour. Lully grinned and said, "Lully knew Miss came in for something! Lully always knows!" which made Brie feel a little foolish, but she had already started, so she carried on._

_She was mixing sugar into the butter and just starting to enjoy herself when the kitchen door swung open and Professor Snape walked in. When he spotted her with the mixing bowl in the crook of her arm and a smudge of flour on her cheek, he stopped and stared for a moment, looking as surprised as she felt._

_"What are YOU doing here?" they both asked at nearly the same time, surprising each other even more._

_Brie recovered first and looked expectantly at Severus, hoping she could catch him off guard and make him answer first. He merely raised an eyebrow and she cursed her fair skin as she felt color seep into her cheeks, but she still didn't answer. Lately she'd been getting very stiff backed and snide in response to his own stiff backed and snide remarks. It seemed almost a game recently, which of them could say the worst, most veiled thing to quiet the other. Waiting him out and making him talk first seemed a logical progression to where they'd been heading for the past few months._

_After a moment Severus sighed and said, "I caught a student in the dungeon on her way back to the Slytherin common room. She informed me why she was out and I came to ask the house elves if this is a regular occurrence with the students." He looked again at the bowl in the crook of her arm and the whisk in her hand and asked dryly, "Homesick?" in a slightly mocking tone._

_Brie felt a flair of indignation at the fact he was so quick to judge and look down his nose at her. Really, what was it hurting for her to be at the school? It wasn't as if she was going to go changing much. Albus had said that the students needed a better perspective on, and more contact with, Muggles. The way he'd explained it all to her, it made perfect sense to bring in someone like her to start up this new class. She didn't understand why there might be objections. She'd signed the Statue of Secrecy agreement, so it wasn't like she was going to run blabbing to everyone she knew that magic was really, really, real._

_Besides, she didn't plan to be around more than a year or two, just enough time to establish the class and hand it over to someone else. She did have a life to get back to and, while magic was amazing and all, being at the school was causing some tremendous waves in her real job._

_She felt her spine stiffen and fought to hold her temper. She had come to expect these kind of jabs from the unpleasant professor, so she resumed mixing to calm herself down and give her hands something to do. She took a deep breath before replying, "Not especially," which was a lie, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right. "I was having trouble sleeping so I decided to go for a walk. I heard a door close as I was walking across the entrance hall. I found your Miss Smalls standing in front of the painting tickling the fruit. Long story short, she told me what she was doing, I removed some points and sent her back to her common room."_

_When he smirked at the bowl she was holding and raised another eyebrow she realized that nothing she had said explained why he had walked in on her with cookie ingredients spread over the worktable, so she grudgingly continued. "I wanted to see if I could make the door open." She paused and looked toward Lully who was standing a little ways away, looking proud. "Things get a little blurry after that." Trying to act as natural as possible for a Muggle in a wizard school who was baking cookies at one in the morning, she dumped brown sugar into the bowl._

_Lully spoke up, "Miss said she would bake cookies at home when she couldn't sleep! Lully gave Miss everything she needed!"_

_Brie looked at Lully, who was almost bursting with pride, then shifted her gaze to Severus. "I was just trying to make small talk, but before I could blink she had everything out. I don't think I could have refused." With a shrug, she continued to stir. "Plus, I really can't sleep and this is as good a way as any to pass the time," she added as an afterthought._

_Severus shrugged too as he watched her stir the batter, smirking when she grabbed an egg and cracked it, one handed, on the side of the bowl. Brie saw him smirk and felt her temper flair again. He was really starting to irk her and she wished he'd go away. She was doing this to make herself feel better, but fat chance of that happening with him around._

_"Are you smirking because you would have done that with magic?" she asked bluntly as she put the bowl down on the table with more force than she meant to. Realizing that stopping in order to challenge him would give him the leverage he seemed to think he already had, she almost instantly grabbed the whisk again and continued to stir, hoping to control her bubbling temper._

_Severus watched her beat the egg into the batter and replied, "On the rare occasion that I crack eggs, yes I use magic."_

_Brie stopped stirring and picked up another egg. She held it in her palm and hesitated before giving her own smirk and holding it out to Severus in a kind of dare. He raised his eyebrows at the gesture and looked up at her in surprise. She looked steadily back at him, daring him to say or do something. For a second or two it looked like he had a furious debate with himself inside his own head before he grudgingly waved his wand, causing the egg to rise out of her hand and crack itself neatly over the bowl._

_It was Brie's turn to look surprised as the hand that had been holding the egg dropped limply to her side. She looked from the bowl to Severus a few times, then said, "I didn't think you would actually do it. That was neat."_

_She'd been hoping the silent request for magic would gall him enough to simply make him leave. When he didn't even insult her lack of magical ability, she was thrown. What game was he playing at? She thought for a second as she picked up the whisk and started to stir again. To break the silence, and test the waters, she asked, "Why didn't you have to say anything? I always hear the students saying... incantations to make spells work."_

_He answered her question absently while continuing to watch her stir, explaining about non verbal spells and how students didn't usually learn the skill until at least sixth year. She didn't understand why he was watching her so intently, but tried to ignore it as she listened. As she reached for the flour to mix into her batter, he stopped her by placing his hand over hers._

_"You didn't stir the same number of times between this egg and the last," he pointed out._

_Surprised, she glanced down at his hand and gave him an odd look from under her lashes, wondering if he was teasing her, but he seemed quite serious._

_"You were counting?" she asked, clearly confused._

_Seeing her glance down at their hands again, he quickly lowered his while asking,"Weren't you?"_

_Brie still didn't understand what he was trying to ask her. Why would she count strokes? She asked as much. "Why would I count?"_

_Suddenly, he looked annoyed. "If you do not count, how are you to know when to stop stirring?" he asked her in the same tone he would use on a particularly dull first year._

_Her temper flared again at his tone. This time she let it bubble over a little. His question gave her enough insight to form a vague idea of why he was asking about counting while stirring, so she answered in the same mocking pitch he had just used toward her. "When baking you usually stop stirring when the lumps are gone. I assume it is different when making potions?"_

_She dumped the flour into her mix, suddenly wanting to be done as quickly as possible, looking challengingly at Severus as she stirred. It was his turn to blush then. Noticing this, Brie felt a small surge of triumph._

_Severus looked everywhere but at Brie and finally said, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize." Blushing deeper, he finally turned to leave, shoulders hunched, hands suddenly hidden up his sleeves._

_Brie saw his discomfort and instantly felt bad. Her instinct to fix things surfaced and almost without knowing it, she reached out and laid her hand on his arm before he could get too far. "Wait," she said, not believing the words that were about to come out of her mouth, "at least stick around and have a cookie. They are almost ready to go in the oven. You can keep me company while they are baking. ...You know... if you want."_

_Severus stopped at the gentle touch on his arm and turned. Gazing at her for a long moment, he looked thoughtful and threw a glance back toward the door, but didn't leave. For a minute or two he stood, shifting his weight slightly from one foot to the other, looking like he didn't know where to go from there._

_Brie smiled a little and continued adding and mixing ingredients. A short awkward silence followed during which she wracked her brain for something to talk about that wouldn't sound horribly Mugglish. She remembered Albus' breakfast ambush about her job from earlier in the week and Severus' apparent interest in the subject, and began to talk about her reptile facility and what her job had been like before Albus had found her and convinced her to come to Hogwarts. She knew the Mugglishness of the topic should be overshadowed by how unusual her job was._

_Trying to gage his reaction was hard, as he seemed to be one of those types of people who had the ability to make their faces into stone, but she told him about how she not only ran what she personally called the venom lab, but also went out into the wild all over the world with whole crews of people and cameras, making documentaries and collecting new specimen so her facility could help produce many different kinds of anti-venom._

_His stone cold expression started to make her a bit uncomfortable, so she found herself running at the mouth a bit more than she meant to. Groping for more topics, she told him about the employee that she'd had to let go shortly before coming to Hogwarts._

_"He was an idiot, I had to fire him before I left for such a long time. I wouldn't have felt right leaving the rest of the staff to keep an eye on him. He was careless, but he thought he was such a bad ass because he worked with dangerous reptiles." She knew her voice clearly showed disgust, but didn't care. She was still disgusted by the whole situation. "I should have known better than to hire him in the first place, he had been bitten more than once already." She shook her head._

_"You normally wouldn't hire someone who had been bitten?" Severus asked, finally looking a bit intrigued_

_"Sometimes you get bitten, it just happens. Of course it is never the snake's fault. It is your fault for being careless." She shrugged and added, " I've had a ton of close calls myself, mostly in the wild. My husband was bitten in Africa and died."_

_She paused for a moment after revealing this fact. She hadn't meant to, and saying it out loud to this person who so clearly didn't care for her felt odd. Not to mention that she was still having a hard time dealing with it, all things considered. Severus quirked an eyebrow at her, but she ignored it and barreled on with the original story._

_"It was where this guy was bitten that should have warned me. Most keepers get bitten on the fingers or the hand. That is because smart keepers are always in control. They keep the snake at a safe distance with the proper tools and they don't grab it until they are sure they have a clear opening, again, using the proper tools and technique." She put stress on the last few words. "Well, this genius had been bitten under his arm, in the rib cage and behind his knee." She stopped talking and slid a batch of cookies into the oven._

_"Humor those of us in the room who don't know what that indicates." Severus quipped when she didn't go on._

_Surprised at the slight levity in his tone, she answered,"That indicates that he is a jackass and so am I for not seeing it right away. You only get bitten in places like that if you don't control the animal properly. He had most likely gotten those bites because he didn't have control of the situation. When snakes are agitated enough they are biting at everything around them, not just the person holding on to them. He probably had it by the tail with no control over the head. I fired him before I left because it wasn't fair for anyone else who worked there to have to worry about getting bitten because he thought he was a macho cowboy." She scowled to herself. "You shouldn't have to go to work wondering if you are going to die today. Even if you work with things that can kill you. I promise everyone I hire that they don't have to wonder."_

_"That's a big promise to make." Severus sounded doubtful that she could possibly keep a promise like that._

_"It's my promise to make. As long as they are careful and good at what they do, listen to my instructions and follow the tried and true methods to the letter, no one has to worry. Much. No one has been bitten at my facility in the years we have been in operation. We've obviously had a few bites out in the field, where there are more variables and things are harder to control, but none in the lab. I'm very proud of that. It will probably happen eventually, but so far we have been lucky because we do our jobs right."_

_She said the last piece with pride in her voice._

_As the cookies baked, Brie moved the conversation to potions, knowing it was a subject he would talk about. She listened as he explained some of the basic points of potion making and found herself impressed at the amount of knowledge that he had to impart and his enthusiasm for his subject._

_Apparently the number of times a potion was stirred DID matter. The direction of the stirring was also important. As well as how finely the ingredients were cut up and sometimes even the length of time between each new addition._

_"Wow," she marveled after learning these facts. "I'm glad baking isn't that involved. If I had had to time the cookie ingredients and count the number of strokes clockwise and counter clockwise we would probably be eating rocks right now."_

_"I suppose I should be glad too then because these are far from rocks," Severus said as he finished off another cookie._

_"I think I will take that as a complement," she chuckled, feeling a ridiculous little surge of pride. It was the closest thing to a positive comment that she'd ever received from the snarky professor._

_Severus replied, without cracking a smile, "Of course you will, that's how I meant it."_

_She was fairly certain that he was showing his British roots with dry humor and wondered briefly why he never showed this side of his personality. So far nearly every other encounter she had had with him had ended up less than pleasant. Even with Albus prodding them into conversations at mealtimes, Brie could tell that Severus didn't actually want to speak with her, but much of the experience tonight had been something different. She was going to have a lot to think about when she was alone again._

_After the last batch was finally done, Brie started to put things away, but Lully stopped her, saying that she wouldn't dream of letting Miss clean up._

_"Thanks for keeping me company," she said as they made their way to the Entrance Hall. "I think I may be able to get to sleep now."_

_She smiled at Severus, then turned and walked up the stairs, listening to her footsteps echoing off the walls. After a few steps, she noticed that she didn't hear any for him, walking away down to the dungeons. Suddenly she heard a soft, "Professor Waters?" and turned, surprised, because it was the first time he had ever addressed her directly and as a professor. "How many points did you say you deducted from Miss Smalls?_

_She was confused, but replied with a frown, "I don't think I did say, but it was ten."_

_He blinked in surprise. "Ten? I would normally take four times that. No matter, I will have to be sure to return the points to my house sometime during the course of the day tomorrow." He immediately got a strange look on his face, before turning abruptly in the direction of the dungeon._

_As Brie watched him go she knew she had a lot of new information to work into her impression of Severus Snape. His last comment had seemed odd. It had almost sounded like he was trying to have a little fun with her. She shook her head and continued toward her rooms. Maybe she wouldn't be able to sleep after all._

_When she saw him at breakfast the next morning she took a chance as she leaned over and asked softly, "Did you manage to return the points yet?"_

_Severus stared at her for a second before the corners of his mouth twitched upward. As Brie watched him almost smile, she knew she'd guessed correctly. Something stubborn inside of her decided that her new mission for the rest of the year would be to make Severus Snape fully smile at least once before summer break. She didn't know how she might accomplish it, but was sure she'd come up with something._

_She reached her goal the following week, when she ran across Severus in the halls after curfew time. In what she knew was a very risky strategy, she showed him the one and only card trick she knew, where she had him pick and remember a card, and put it back in the deck. He was mildly impressed when, after she shuffled them, she managed to find the correct one on the first try. (Truthfully, she was impressed with herself as well. There was always about a fifty-fifty chance that she'd screw it up because she was horrible at the actual execution of the trick.)_

_Once done, she explained to him how she'd done it and demonstrated the slight of hand that had been involved, hoping that he wouldn't clue into the fact that she'd been carrying around a stupid deck of cards for the past week, waiting for just that opportunity._

_"And that's how a Muggle fakes magic," she quipped as she put the deck away in her pocket. "You know, in case you were ever wondering."_

_At first she thought that she'd miscalculated. Severus' face remained blank for a few seconds before he snorted out a chuckle, which was accompanied by a lopsided half sneer, half smile, as if he'd been trying to keep himself from reacting at all, but hadn't succeeded._

_"I'm not sure if I ever was, but now I suppose I can rest assured that I won't have to," he said dryly, with an almost indulgent look on his face._

_Brie grinned at him then, hoping to double down on her goal and mirror another smile out of him, but she was disappointed. He simply smirked fully, and walked off with his robes whooshing out behind him. She wasn't sure if it was her imagination, but she thought that it might have been a less nasty smirk than he'd been leveling at her since the beginning of the school year and perhaps he didn't walk away quite as fast as usual._

Smiling to herself at the memory, Brie slowed her pace. She decided that she had been rash and foolish and it would be stupid to continue being mad, so she would go have a shower and then try to find Severus. At least she could tell him she was sorry for snapping at him. Maybe he would be in the mood to talk and they could put everything behind them. She had managed to meet her first year goal of making Severus smile before summer break, she would be able to get him to listen to her today.

Rounding the lake, she suddenly realized that she wouldn't have to look for Severus after all, because he was heading toward her, down the sloping lawn that lead from the castle. Slowing her pace even further, trying to time it so that she would meet him at the bottom of the small hill, she studied her friend.

He was tall- her own head barely came to his shoulder- and his collar length black hair was shifting in the breeze. Knowing that he kept it long to hide his face, trying to direct attention away from his nose, she had tried to convince him a few times to stop worrying about it. It was a little bit larger than most, but so what? So far she hadn't had much impact on his opinion. His build seemed lanky and angular as he strode toward her in his black billowing robes, but she had recently found out that those over-clothes hid a surprisingly fit body for one who stirred potions or marked essays most of the day.

As recently as last month, she had never really thought about how alike 'coming' and 'come in' sounded... until she'd been standing in Severus's bedroom doorway with her hand still on the knob, staring at him in shock and a little grudging admiration, while he stared back at her, wearing nothing but a pained expression. Of course she had recovered herself as quickly as possible and backed out of the room while closing the door, stuttering apologies and suppressing laughter.

Brie may have found it funny but Severus had been mortified and wouldn't meet her eyes for days afterward. She had finally solved the problem by barging into his office, plucking the book he was reading out of his hands, and grinning at him while saying she missed looking him in the eye, and that he had absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about, but if he was then she could certainly arrange for him to walk in on her someday. She'd capped it off with a saucy wink.

It had worked. He'd smiled and blushed deeply but continued to look in her eyes as he hastily assured her that it wouldn't be necessary. She handed back the book, saying that he had protested so quickly it had hurt her feelings. He had whacked her on the arm with his book and she had known that everything was all right again. He'd still blushed when meeting her eye for most of the rest of the day, but it had been progress.

She tried to push the thoughts away now, as she slowed to a walk while Severus reached the bottom of the hill. She swallowed nervously as she approached, speaking as soon as she was near enough for him to hear. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sor..." Severus stopped and blinked once in surprise. "Sorry for what? I was the git."

She walked up to him and replied. "I'm sorry for getting angry. I thought you were saying awful things about Muggles again. I've been thinking about it and I don't see how you would have been. There was nothing to say about Muggles. And you weren't a jerk, I was. I got mad and stormed off for no good reason and didn't even bother to find out what you really did say."

Severus smiled, "I knew you were going to say jerk." He shook his head. "Anyway I was a git, jerk, whatever, for blurting out foolish things then avoiding you. I'm not surprised you got angry."

Brie didn't see the point in having another argument over whose fault the first one had been, so she said. "Then I guess we are both gits or jerks or whatever. What did you say this morning anyway? I really didn't hear you."

Severus blushed all over again and mumbled hurriedly, "You had just finished saying that you miss spending time with your friends back home and then I said that I very much enjoy spending time with you here." He looked away again, then sighed and looked over at Brie instead.

Comically outraged for a split second, she exclaimed, "THAT'S what you got upset over? I was wrong, you are a git, Severus!"

She started laughing and bent over to grip her knees. Gasping for breath she continued, "I got myself all worked up over this! I should have known better! Now I feel even worse for walking away." That last thought sobered her, and she straightened, looking out across the lake. After a brief pause she looked at Severus and asked, "Are we, you know, OK now?"

Severus hastily assured her that they had never stopped being OK, as she had put it.

"Good," she said, feeling much better. "I kinda feel like I want to give you a hug, but I am all sweaty and gross."

He didn't do well with close contact anyway. Even a touch on the hand would make him jump, a hug would probably give him a seizure. Already he looked odd, like he was considering something.

Severus stepped toward her saying, "I have a solution for that."

Without further warning, he scooped Brie up, slinging her over his shoulder as he jogged the few steps to the edge of the lake. She saw the gleam in his eye and held up both hands in surprise, but he was too quick and she was too unused to a playful Severus Snape. Frankly, she was amazed, as she bounced on his shoulder and tried to figure out what was going on. Severus had never done anything like this before. Hell, hadn't she just thought about how he barely touched her of his own accord and still looked a little shocked if she reached out to touch him?

The surprise of it all kept her from realizing exactly what was going on until it was almost too late. Once she saw that he was heading toward the water, and realized that it could only mean one thing, even if it was the most out of the ordinary thing she'd ever experienced from him, she panicked and started hammering her fists on his back while squealing that the water was going to be freezing so early in the spring. She swore she would drag him in with her or die seeking revenge if she couldn't.

"Hold your breath," he suggested as he heaved her off his shoulder and into the water.

Letting loose a high pitched squeal, she grabbed at his robes, successfully pulling him in with her. The chill took away the breath she hadn't bothered to hold, but she was able to turn and grab his ankles, pulling him further under before swimming away. After that, she scrambled up onto the bank and collapsed with laughter as she watched him surface and wade toward her shaking hair out of his eyes.

"You are like a bloody eel in the water you know," he called as he made his way to the bank.

"Practice my friend. You try catching sea snakes and spearing fish for dinner and see how well you learn to maneuver underwater," she called back to him.

"I believe you are bragging again," Severus panted as he hauled himself out of the water.

"Hey, I have to brag! I'm the only Muggle in Wizardland. You all can do cool stuff. I've at least done cool stuff, Mugglestyle." She had long since given up trying to hide her semi celebrity status. "It's my duty to all Muggle kind to show the wizarding world that Muggles can be amazing too." Standing, she wrapped her arms around herself. "At least this counts as my monthly bath. Now lets get inside and dry off. I'm freezing."

He took out his wand and waved it over her saying, "I find this much easier." In seconds she was warm and dry. "Now we can go right to dinner."

"I wish I could do that." she said wistfully, glancing at his wand as he finished drying himself and they started back to the castle.

"Why would you wish that?" he asked. I thought you were the Amazing Muggle. Now tell me again; why do Muggles run for no good reason?"

She knew he was trying to make her smile so she pokered up and said, "Because Muggles don't get to live to a hundred and fifty. We have to work hard to even make it to eighty-five in good condition. Plus it keeps my pinned together hips strong." Her mock gravity gave way to real sincerity. "And maybe I am the Amazing Muggle to some wizards at Hogwarts but there are other Muggles in the world far more amazing than me."

"Perhaps," he said as they trudged back up the deserted hill, "but that doesn't change those amazing things."

She did smile then, as he seemed to want, and briefly laid hand on his arm, surprised to feel him tentatively give it a pat with his own. After a second, she dropped her hand and so did he. She knew he wasn't comfortable with prolonged contact, but also thought that it probably wouldn't do for two professors to be seen having too much physicality between them. Especially when one of them was a Muggle. Something like that was sure to feed the rumor mill for weeks.

With a sigh she kept pace with Severus and wondered if there was ever any way a Muggle and a wizard would be able to be friends out in the open, without either of them having to hide anything from anyone. Considering that Muggles weren't technically allowed in the Wizarding world - except herself, in this special situation, of course- and wizards weren't allowed to perform magic around Muggles, she highly doubted it. She knew that sometimes witches and wizards married Muggles and had children who were or weren't magical, and wondered how that worked out for everyone involved. It would make for an interesting study, if it weren't so horribly nosy and personal.

**AN: Thanks to the favs and follows so far. Let me know what you guys think with a little review!**


	4. Chapter 3: A Day for Stories

**AN: The song in this chapter is by a wonderful singer/songwriter Ryan Fitzsimmons. It's called North Central Line. The story Brie tells belongs to Gregory Maguire. Thanks to the new favs and follows, I love seeing those pop up almost as much as reviews. ;) **

3 - A Day for Stories

Sunday dawned bright and mild and Severus found himself in a much better mood. He even considered going over the essay that had earned a T from the day before, but when he picked it up and scanned it again, he decided to leave it as it was. As he re-read a paragraph that, if executed as suggested, would most likely blow the brewers eyebrows off, he pinched the bridge of his nose and glanced at the name at the top of the parchment.

Sighing, he wondered briefly how many more Goyles he would have to endure in the course of his teaching career. Slightly cheered because he was fairly certain there was only one left, coming in with next years crop of first years, he dressed and made his way to the Great Hall for breakfast. He was an early riser, so the Great Hall was almost deserted when he arrived. Just the way he liked it. Nodding to two students at his own house table, he strode up the aisle looking forward to some coffee.

A few students and other professors started to shuffle in as Severus finished breakfast. While he sipped his coffee, he and Minerva exchanged morning chit chat, after which he rose and went off to the dungeons to set up for Monday's classes. He entered the school potions supply closet to gather the unicorn tail hair, ginger roots, and hellebore that would be required for the day and brought them to his classroom. Going to retrieve his mortar and pestle, he paused by a work table near the front of the room.

Before he had made his horrible, horrible error in judgment, (_'the first of many,' _he berated himself) he and Lily had most often shared this table when they had had potions together. Not allowing himself to brood over it, he continued to the store cabinet at the back of the room. He still didn't want to think about Lily and his past actions or her son and the unseen future. He had until next year to get everything straight in his head and heart. As straight as it was going to be, anyway.

To keep his mind off the past, he decided to brew some of the potions that he'd been meaning to get to. He finished gathering his ingredients and had just started grinding moonstones to use in a batch of The Draught Of Peace, which Poppy had requested for all the overwrought NEWT students, when Brie shuffled in, yawning and saying she figured she would find him there.

"You're too predictable Severus. It worries me." She picked up a strand of unicorn hair and studied it for a second before inquiring, "Unicorn hair?"

Ignoring her first comment because he was still brooding over his thoughts, Severus looked up and answered, "Correct, but which type?" before returning to his grinding.

Brie studied the hair again with a slight frown. "There are different types?" she questioned. "The book I read didn't say anything about different types." She stretched her arms above her head, then out to the sides, working the kinks out of her shoulders.

"No. It was a trick question," Severus answered absently as he used his wand to light a fire under his cauldron before turning to get the first ingredient.

When she waved a hand in front of his face, he knew she was getting frustrated with his level of inattention. It amused him because she was also capable of being drawn so far into her work that it was hard to get a reaction out of her. He vaguely waved her off with a grunt, and she huffed out a breath, giving up.

"Well I can see you are busy. I'm going to go catch the tail end of breakfast and take care of a few other things. Then I am going to take advantage of this beautiful day." She poked him in the shoulder to make him pay attention, and continued, "Want to meet me outside later and watch the clouds roll by, or something?"

He nodded saying, "This won't take long," while waving her away again. "If you stop pestering me," he finished, only half joking. _'And if I can stop thinking about the bloody Brat Who Lived,'_ the voice in his head put in.

She strolled out the door saying under her breath, "Gee you sure are pleasant in the morning. You might try sleeping later. It could improve your mood."

He meant to make some joke about her morning personality despite her penchant for sleeping later, but was already in deep concentration, so he merely grunted again as she left. Once alone, he chopped, spliced, sprinkled, and stirred. An hour and a half later, as he handed Poppy the completed potion, he assured her that he would make the Pepper-up potion she required sometime during the coming week.

Vaguely remembering Brie's brief morning visit, he headed out to the grounds, trying to remember if she had said where she was going to be. He was fairly sure she hadn't specified any particular spot, so he headed toward the lake thinking that she might be running again today. On his way to the water he thought back to yesterday, when he'd impulsively picked her up to throw her in.

He didn't know what had possessed him to do it. She was so damned small, he sort of always wanted to scoop her up and put her in his pocket. It was the oddest feeling. Yesterday, the sudden wave of relief that had washed over him when he and Brie had sorted themselves out, made him realize that much of his unease over something so silly and trivial had likely partly stemmed from his past experience with ill considered words and the consequences thereof.

Glad that their tiff seemed to be over, and not wanting to contemplate anything even remotely connected to those past experiences, he had been seized by a sudden urge to do something unexpected, which was an occurrence that happened only very rarely and usually only when he was alone. He'd felt a bit awkward, swooping in to scoop her up, but knew that he had to be fast, because she was also fast.

More and more lately he'd been doing things that made him feel awkward or uncomfortable, rather than avoiding them. Most of those things centered somehow around Brie and her influence. The idea itself made him feel more awkward still. There was a small and petty part of him that didn't want it to seem to onlookers that he didn't dislike Muggles. That nasty part grew smaller and quieter with each passing week that he spent in Brie's company. He didn't think it was a bad thing, but it didn't really make the transition more comfortable either. Letting go of something he'd held onto for so long was proving more difficult than it really should be and he probably should be a bit concerned about it.

As he walked, and mused, he was distracted by a familiar sound as he passed a small grove of trees. Figuring that he had found Brie, he abandoned his thoughts and went to investigate. Sure enough, as he stepped between the gnarled trunks and pushed aside a branch, he spotted her. She was facing away from him, leaning up against a tree with a guitar nestled in her lap. Periodically she would stop playing to give one of the tuning keys a turn, then continue to strum. Severus hung back for a moment and listened. He had only heard her play once or twice and knew that she was likely to stop if she found that she had an audience. At least she had the other times he'd stumbled across her like this. She was uncharacteristically shy about this talent, and had probably expected him to take longer to brew the potion, and had planned to stop before he got there.

He was just about to clear his throat to let her know he was there, when she stopped tuning and started to play an actual song. Hanging back he smiled to himself as he listened to the intro, he was surprised when she started to sing softly.

_There are boards on the windows and locks on the doors  
Though there's nothing to keep safe inside anymore  
Just aged yellow paper and old photographs  
Lying there on the floor like some sad epitaph  
Oh lying there on the floor  
Scraps of history lie, not a whole lot more_

_I'm waiting on the North Central Line  
At a station that has no place or time  
On a platform pushed up against the new highway  
Waiting with the ghosts here at night  
Searching for the tracks or the light  
Of the engines the interstate dusted away  
That train don't stop anymore…_

_There's a bridge over nothing on the old interstate  
Just past Orleans 'round mile 168  
Ten tons of steel over an old railroad bed  
Just in case they decide to bring it back from the dead  
Maybe lay those tracks down once more  
from those city lights  
To the Ontario Shore_

_And I'm waiting on the North Central Line  
At a station that has no place or time  
On platform that is slowly rotting away  
Waiting with the statues at night  
Searching for what's long out of sight  
At this station pressed up against the new highway  
And the trains don't stop anymore_

_Gleaming white sign for the last gas station  
Out on the new highway  
Takes on a new kind of personification  
Out on the new highway  
I'm sure that horizon looks just like a mirror  
Out on the new highway  
Maybe your blue reflection's a little bit clearer  
Out on the new highway_

_The frames of your mind all intertwine  
Out on the new highway  
All of the tears seem a bit less sincere  
Out on the new highway  
The ghosts of the past are all walking at last  
Out on the new highway  
The trains are all gone but you're still moving on  
Out on the new highway_

_Waiting on the North Central Line  
At a station that has no place or time  
On platform where nobody waits anyway  
Waiting is only a word  
That is seldom spoken or heard  
At this station pressed up against the new highway  
And that train don't stop anymore  
No that train don't stop here anymore_

Her voice trailed off as the music did and Severus walked over to her and sat down. "That was nice," he said, impressed because he had never heard her sing before. She had a pleasant voice. You wouldn't hear her on the wizard wireless, but it was nice nonetheless.

Brie jumped and looked embarrassed. "Oh yeah I'm a super star," she joked, awkwardly. "Someone I know wrote that. I like to hear it sometimes. I didn't know anyone else was around yet to hear me."

She reached for the guitar case and Severus assumed that she meant to put the instrument away. Disappointed, he smoothed his robes out over his knees before looking up at her and noticing she was watching him. With a shoulder jerk he looked at the guitar, then off out into the distance. She seemed not to like to play for other people, so he supposed that he shouldn't be surprised that she wasn't going to continue. When he looked back, he saw that she had stopped and laid the guitar back on her lap rather than in the case.

"You finished up faster than I expected," she said as she ran her fingers lightly up and down the strings, making little zipping noises.

Smirking as his earlier suspicions of why he'd found her nestled in the trees were confirmed, he answered, "I told you it wouldn't take long if you stopped pestering me."

She let out an exasperated sigh. "Oh from the way you talk someone would think I was in there slamming the cauldrons together or throwing frog guts or something." Shaking her head, she lifted the guitar and resumed playing softly. She wasn't playing anything in particular, just a series of notes and chords that seemed to float away on the gentle breeze.

Severus chose not to answer and instead shifted position so that he was leaning against the same tree Brie was. He couldn't see her face. If he looked over at her only her left ear and cheek were visible to him. Looking straight ahead, he would periodically catch a glimpse of her elbow moving out of the corner of his eye as she played.

After awhile he got the odd sensation that he was being watched and glanced around, seeing that he indeed was right. Brie had shifted while his thoughts drifted and was studying him as she strummed. With a contemplative look on her face she changed the meandering tune slightly and inquired, "Severus, have you ever heard the Muggle story about the Wicked Witch of the West?"

Slightly annoyed because she had already told him the story of The Wizard of Oz and she knew it, he frowned. He hadn't been happy at all at the character of the evil witch and Brie had tried to explain that good had to have its evil, so the good witch was sort of the balance for the evil witch.

"_I understand the concept," Severus replied waspishly, "I still dislike the general Muggle portrayal of witches and wizards in their stories and folklore, and especially in real life. Don't think that because we aren't in America that we don't still learn about The Salem Witch Trials!"_

_Brie threw up her hands at his sudden outburst and said, "Hey that was way before my time. I've never even been to Salem, and I grew up in Massachusetts, cut me some slack! Anyway you are the one who keeps asking about witches and wizards in Muggle culture." _

_It was true. Lately his attention had been piqued by her Muggle fairy tales. As he got hold of his temper, Severus sighed. "I didn't mean to snap at you. It just makes me angry, that's all."_

"_Well if it makes you feel better, not one of the nineteen people put to death in Salem was actually a witch," Brie stated, looking unsure if the information would anger him further._

_It didn't, but it still hadn't changed his opinion. In fact, it reinforced it. "Will you finish the story?" he asked, hoping there would be a happy ending._

"_Are you sure?" Brie questioned, narrowing her eyes in suspicion._

"_Yes, I won't yell at you again, I just want to know how it ends." _

_Of course Muggles would think that the story ended happily, but Severus had really only wanted to know what had become of the witch, so he was disappointed._

"_I didn't like that one," he said to Brie when she had finished._

"_I didn't think you would, but its a big one in my world," she replied. "There is a different version of the story. I'll tell you some day because I think you will like it better." _

_She put her hand on his knee then, and sighed. The contact startled him, but after some hesitation Severus gently laid his own hand on hers, hoping she would understand that he wasn't mad at her._

"Yes, as I recall I didn't care for that story," Severus answered, wondering why she was asking.

She didn't even flinch at his slightly waspish tone. "No, no. Not that story, Professor Sunshine."

She stopped playing with an abrupt clatter of chords. The harsh noise, then sudden silence snapped his focus to her. She was looking over at him and he could see by the glimmer in her eye that she was up to something, so he answered cautiously, "The version I'll supposedly like better?"

She grinned and continued playing as she turned to lean against the tree again. This time it seemed that she was playing an actual song, but he hadn't ever heard it before. "Well, it doesn't end any better for the witch I'm sorry to say, but it does cast her in an entirely different light; which I think you will like."

"But in the end its the same?" he asked, doubtfully.

"Essentially the same, but much different at the same time," she answered. "Would you like to hear it?"

Intrigued and unsure of how the story could end the same way and be different at the same time, Severus answered, "I am already confused, but I suppose I would still like to hear it."

With a nod, she started to hum a bit to the tune she was playing. It seemed like she was trying to learn on the spot how to play the song she wanted. Several times she hit notes that she obviously didn't like, if he read her expression correctly. As she hummed, every now and then she'd softly sing a few words of the song.

"Hmm hmm hmmm rainbow. Hmm hmm, high. Hmm hmm lala la la once in a lullaby."

After a minute, she seemed satisfied with the tune and began the actual tale. She proceeded to tell him of the witch's odd birth and questionable parentage, how she had been born green in a world where no one was green. She told of an Oz where Munchkinland was brought to its knees by drought and different faiths warred. An Oz where poor munchkin farmers toiled, and other people lived in luxury, while others were persecuted for their differences, and still more choose to live in remote mountain areas cut off from all of Oz. She moved onto the tale of the Wizard's arrival, the brutal overthrowing of the current government, and the subsequent campaigns of the Wizard - with prejudices against sentient Animals and different races of Oz's people.

Severus soon found himself caught up in the less than fairy tale world that she was crafting for him as he listened to the constant underscore of music she provided for her narrative. She continued on as the young witch started school and found herself room mates with the girl who would eventually become the good witch.

He stretched out in the grass next to Brie, arms folded behind his head, staring at the clouds through the leaves, as the disenchanted young witch left school and moved to the Emerald City where she became a spy for an Animal rights resistance group and took a secret lover who was subsequently killed by the Wizard's forces. After the great trauma of failing her biggest mission and losing her lover, the witch took refuge with a group of religious women similar to Muggle nuns, and when the time came for her to leave and confront her secret lover's family, they sent a child along with her.

Brie moved on to the bizarre occurrences with, and deaths of the secret lover's family; again by the Wizard's forces, and the questionable parentage of the child.

"So this is kind of where the Wizard of Oz story starts to get mixed in," she said as she stopped playing and stretched out her shoulders. "The witch is out in the west of Oz living in a castle stronghold in the mountains, and Dorothy and her awful little dog fall out of the sky, landing their house right on the witch's sister. Glinda gives Dorothy the famed ruby slippers and sends her down the yellow brick road where she meets all her friends on the way. She gets to the wizard who tells her to go kill the Wicked Witch of the West," Brie recapped as she flexed her fingers and lifted the guitar again.

"Now here is where it starts to go the same, but different." The music resumed, taking him back to the world she had crafted. "The witch had been getting more and more eccentric and apprehensive since the Wizard's army had taken and killed the family of her lover. She spent a great deal of time trying to figure out some way of uniting all the people of Oz to overthrow the Wizard and end his strangle hold on the country. Some would probably say she was going crazy, and maybe she was, because she also happened to be sewing wings onto monkeys. What she didn't know was that the Wizard considered her a great threat to his rule in Oz and had been trying to keep an eye on her since her days as a spy in the Emerald City." She strummed out another dramatic discord, purely for effect.

Severus looked over at her in surprise and she smiled back in triumph. "Just making sure you were paying attention." She continued to play and the music took on a dramatic edge. "So as this story goes, Dorothy makes her way out to the castle stronghold and finds the witch there, crazy as a loon. Of course there is a giant misunderstanding and somehow the witch catches her clothing on fire and Dorothy helpfully throws a handy bucket of water on her. Unknowingly, but no less efficiently, ending her life." Brie stopped playing again and laid the guitar in its case. "So the question that this story raises is; Was the witch really evil?" She stretched out on her back next to Severus and watched the clouds float by through the tree branches.

Severus propped himself up on his elbows and frowned down at her. "I don't think I can answer that question," he said, disturbed by the thought. If he hadn't learned the difference between good and evil after all he'd been through, what hope was there for him if he was ever again faced with the decision to choose between them?

Brie looked up into his perplexed face and said, "I had to read the book twice before I figured out my own opinion. I have it in my rooms somewhere. Would you like to read it?"

"Yes." He laid back and thought for a minute. "So what is your opinion about the witch?"

"I'm not telling you till you read the whole book. There are probably a ton of details I forgot to tell you about anyway." She rolled over on her side and propped herself up on one elbow so she could look at him. In a statement so baldly and bluntly put that he would have expected it to come out of his own mouth, she asked, "So now it's your turn to tell me a story. What's been on your mind the last few days Severus? Something is bothering you, I can tell."

He sat bold upright, surprised by the question. Without thinking, he pushed himself to his feet and started to pace the small grove of trees that concealed them. Brie quickly pushed herself up as well, looking confused. She was already on her feet by the time Severus had reached the trees on the far side of the grove. He was surprised to find her already standing when he turned toward her again.

_'She moves like a bloody Aethonon,'_ he thought. He'd bet his best cauldron that this is what that glimmer in her eye had been about earlier. Trying to figure out the best way to recapture the lazy ease they'd had before her question, he strolled back toward her and sat down again. "I don't know what you are talking about," he tried, already knowing that it wasn't going to work.

She sat as well, folding her legs under her as she said, "So you shot up like that because...what, did something bite you or maybe someone cast a jumping jinx on you?" She gazed steadily at him for a bit before sighing. "Look," she continued as he started to fidget and feel uncomfortable, "you don't have to tell me, but talking about whatever it is will probably make you feel better. Might even help you figure it out, if whatever it is needs figuring." She looked him steadily in the eye for awhile then said, "OK, well where's my wizard story? You got a song and a story so it's only fair I get at least a story."

"You didn't know I was there for the song." His mind was still reeling at her emotional pinpoint accuracy. She could tell something was bothering him even when he was trying to ignore it himself. She had brutally and bluntly dug through to a problem that he was trying to bury deep and then told him he could keep it to himself if he still chose to do so. It was unnerving and he needed a minute to process it.

"That doesn't matter!" she answered with a laugh, "You still heard it AND I told you a whole long story on top of that AND I played the guitar throughout the whole dam thing! Give it up Severus, tell me something I've never heard before."

_'__She could make it that easy,__'_ he though. One second she could be holding the roots of his problem in front of his face, making him aware that she could see right through him and the next second she could tell him that he didn't have to talk to her about it, but would always be there if he changed his mind. Then she could smooth it all over and bring everything back to the way it had been before.

His mind reeled as the past pushed itself into the front of his thoughts and he briefly saw Lily's pretty face in his mind's eye. _'Should I tell her?'_ he wondered to himself looking down at a different pretty face. This was something no one knew; something that he just didn't talk about.

He knew he would have to tell her parts of the whole sad story before the next school year started, but he hadn't yet decided what parts in particular he was going to mention. It was a long complicated story. One thing connected to another to another to another. It would be hard to tell her anything without telling her everything, and no matter how he told it, he knew he wouldn't come out looking well at all.

She would ask questions anyway, even if he didn't tell her. She was far too observant and far too curious not to notice something. She essentially had just proven that she already could see a change in him. By the time the next school year started, he knew that he'd be more touchy and twitchy still. Most people wrote that kind of behavior off as him being... well, himself really, but Brie hadn't known him long enough to simply assume he was Snape, being Snape, as everyone else did.

Still wondering what to do, Severus took out his wand as he rose to cast a Silencing Charm around their grove of trees. "You're not going to tell me a naughty story that wouldn't be suitable for children are you?" she started to joke. He knew from the playful question that she'd recognized the Silencing Charm. The more she studied about magic, the better she was getting at recognizing things. When he turned toward her, and she saw his face, her playful smirk vanished. "Severus are you OK?" she questioned with concern in her eyes.

"I'm fine," he lied with his voice unsteady. "I have a story, its a complicated and sad story. I don't think you will like it."

"Tell me anyway," Brie said as she patted the ground next to her, inviting him to sit down. Severus shook his head and resumed pacing around the grove of trees with long jerky strides as he would whenever he was agitated. _ 'How to start?'_ he wondered. _ 'How do you reveal the worst thing about yourself?' _ Maybe the easiest way would be to tell it like a story.

"Once upon a time," he began, using the most common opening phrase from Brie's fairy tales. "Not so long ago, there lived a little witch and a little wizard..."

As the story unraveled, Severus started to slow his pacing and eventually took the seat that Brie had offered at the start of his tale. He felt the familiar emotional upheaval that this story always brought him, along with an equally familiar soul bruising sadness that bordered on despair. But somehow this time, it was different. He was willingly telling his tale to someone he was starting to feel close to, someone he felt some kind of connection to despite their substantial differences. It was a story he had never told anyone and the only other person in the world who knew it in it's entirety was Albus. Somehow that was like a balm to his bruised soul.

He told her most of it, keeping some of the more choice bits to himself. As studied as she was starting to become, there were some things a Muggle just wouldn't understand. One or two other things he decided that he'd still rather keep for himself, for personal reasons. He took her from the childhood friendship he and Lily had shared when he taught her all about the magical world, to their early school days.

"I saw her by accident one day," he said, softly, running his palm over the grass. "She was playing in the park with her sister. I could tell she was a witch. She didn't know it yet, though. She was a Muggle born."

Without many of the grittier details of their torments, he told of James Potter and the Marauders and the awful day he had called Lily a Mudblood. There was a bit of an uncomfortable pause when he had to explain what the word meant and the weight it carried, especially at such a volatile time in wizard history.

"I was angry and humiliated," he whispered, barely louder than the wind in the leaves around them. He wondered if Brie could even hear him above the background noise of nature.

Not sparing himself, he finally got to the point where he had joined the Death Eaters, overheard the prophecy, and relayed the information to the Dark Lord. He wanted nothing more than to stop at this point, but willed himself on, telling her about how the Dark Lord had targeted Lily and her family because of the information contained in the prophecy.

"I begged the Dark Lord not to hurt her," he said heavily, "Then I went to Dumbledore."

Watching as her eyes widened, he continued on to the part that he'd been torn about revealing, but in that moment he needed her to know that he'd changed, so he told of how he had turned spy for the Order, how Albus had given him the Potion Master position and how the Dark Lord began to use the position within the school to his, perceived, advantage.

"Wait, wait," she interrupted at that point. "So you were spying for this Order thing, and that Dark Lord Whoever thought that you were still loyal and spying for him? Holy Underwear Batman, you must have nerves of steel!"

"I am simply good at Occlumency and Legilimency," he said listlessly. Hoping to stay on a different subject for even just a little while, he asked, "What is Batman?"

"Just a Muggle superhero. He doesn't really exist, forget him for now." She waved her hand in the air as if pushing the issue aside. "What are Legilimency and Occlumency?" she questioned.

"The ability to extract emotions and memory from other people's minds and the ability to protect your own mind from outside intruders," he answered. "Batman wears holey underwear?"

"Forget about Batman!" she looked concerned and a bit alarmed. "You can read minds? Can all witches and wizards read minds?" After a seconds hesitation and a shifty look toward him, she asked "...Are you reading my mind right now?"

"Legilimency is not mind reading in the strictest sense of the term, but close enough I suppose." He ignored his usual annoyance at the comparison. She didn't know better. "Very few witches and wizards learn the skills. I wouldn't invade your thoughts like that Brie."

Well, he wouldn't on purpose. There had been one or two times recently when he had essentially accidentally probed her mind while he was trying to understand something Muggle she was attempting to explain to him. Before he could check himself of the habit he'd developed to get to the bottom of student lies and stories, he'd started to use his skills on her before stopping himself and backing out of her consciousness. He'd only caught bare glimpses of her memories, and had felt badly about the slip ups for days afterward.

Concerned that he'd managed to poison himself in her mind, he desperately wondered if she would have asked that question of him before he'd told her his dark past. If he had, what was done was done and he wanted to be over as quickly as possible, so he sighed and forged ahead telling her about Sirius Black's betrayal as Secret Keeper and how, without the protection of the Fidelus charm, the Dark Lord had found and killed Lily and James, but somehow their son had lived against all odds and seemingly defeated the Dark Lord.

"and next year Harry Bloody Potter, The Boy Who Lived, comes to Hogwarts," he finished feeling exhausted emotionally and physically.

They sat together in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds were the wind rustling through the trees and birds singing. He was afraid to look over at her, worried he'd see disgust in her eyes. The silent minutes dragged on and suddenly Severus heard a soft sniffle. When he turned toward Brie, it was to find her with a tear running down her cheek. She dashed it away as he turned, but he'd still seen it.

Horrified because he had made her cry, he reached over and patted her hand awkwardly while saying, "I didn't mean for you to cry. I told you that you wouldn't like it. Perhaps I should have said that you probably wouldn't like me by the end."

He started to take his hand away, and rise to go, since he assumed she didn't want to be in his company anymore, but she quickly turned her own hand over and held his, so he couldn't pull away. Looking down at their joined hands in surprise, he let the implication sink in. She didn't want him to leave.

Dabbing at her eyes with her other hand, she hastily assured him that she was OK. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I hate crying, I'm trying not to." Clearing her throat, she tried to explain, "I don't know what to say Severus. Everything you just told me was so awful and sad. You, erm... it really seems like you made a lot of bad choices, based off of ridiculous and wrong ideas. That's... well, I'm going to have to sit with that awhile and figure out how to feel about it."

He winced and hung his head, but she continued, "but you loved Lily so much that that loved changed you." She stopped and considered what to say next. "I know you must have done some horrible things while you were with those Death Eater people, but you realized what was important and started to fight for what was right. I think that is a really critical point." She gave his hand a squeeze and finished, "but you are right, overall I didn't like that story."

"I don't like it either," he said, feeling himself slipping into a despondent mood and releasing her hand. Suddenly he didn't want to talk about it anymore. He wasn't sure if Brie really understood the depth of the pain and sadness he felt over the last part of his friendship with Lily and their estrangement and his involvement in her death. Aside from the day Lily had died, he had never felt any worse than he had on the day she had given up and walked away from him or the day he realized the Dark Lord was targeting her. Understandably, Brie was just as focused on the other details he'd revealed and didn't seem as centered on his point as he'd hoped she'd be.

Not wanting to upset her, Severus controlled the urge to go brood somewhere by himself. "I would rather not discuss it anymore," he told her flatly, ignoring the startled look she gave him. "I think I deserve another story, something foolish. Tell me about Batman."

She frowned for a second, looking concerned, but then said, "You certainly do, this is a day for stories. I don't know much about Batman, so he will have to wait for another day. Let me think a minute."

After thinking about it for a little while, something made her smile. "Ok, I have one. This one you should like. There is even a kind of magic in it. After another breath she began, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."


	5. Chapter 4: Lines of Communication

4- Lines of Communication

After lunch, Severus said he was low on certain potion ingredients that could be gathered from the Forbidden Forest. Considering his sudden monotone speech, Brie figured that he wanted to be alone after his emotional purge so they parted ways. After he left, she walked slowly to her rooms thinking about everything Severus had told her.

It was a lot to take in and she briefly wondered how she could find out more about these Death Eater people before deciding that she probably didn't want to know any more than Severus had already told her for now. They sounded horrible. She still wasn't sure how to deal with the fact that Severus had once willingly been a part of something like that.

Had she and Severus not become friendlier over the past years, she probably would not have had a hard time believing it. Now though, pretty much everything she had learned about Severus since he'd started to let go of his silly Muggle prejudices made her wonder why he would have been part of something so sinister. Severus Snape had become her yardstick for not judging books by covers and she had a feeling that there was even more to his story than he had told her that afternoon.

She hadn't wanted to interrupt him as the story had spilled out, but now she had questions that she kind of wished she had asked anyway. Still troubled by her thoughts, she absently gave the troll in the painting the password to her rooms. "Bitis gabonica._"_

She had used this password frequently since her first week at Hogwarts because she knew she would never forget it and no one here would ever guess it either. She had periodically changed it over the years but eventually always went back. Walking into the drawing room, she noticed a plate of cookies on her desk and knew that Lully had visited while she had been out. Smiling in spite of herself over the sweets, she wondered when, if ever, the little elf would stop. At least once every few weeks Brie would come in and find another plate of cookies. She actually never wanted to see another chocolate chip cookie much less eat one so she would bring them into class tomorrow and let the kids have them.

Her head hurt slightly as she considered Severus' troubles. When she had questioned him that morning she would never have guessed that there was such a long and frankly tragic story haunting him. She envied his emotional control to some degree but knew what holding in that much pain and grief could do to you. She thought back to the days when she had first meet Severus and suddenly his behavior then seemed more understandable. No less rude or annoying, but more forgivable now in any case.

She felt guilty for pressing him to tell her his problem, but tried to console herself. She had only been trying to help. For weeks she had sensed that something was bothering him and his ever shortening temper had confirmed her suspicions more than once. She had simply seen the problem bubbling at the surface this morning, and had tried to help in the best way she knew how. Honestly, she assumed he was having trouble with one of his students or some kind of similar work related problem.

_'Way to play amateur shrink, genius,' _ she thought to herself. _'Now he feels worse than when you started. Bravo!' _ She imagined she heard the slow mocking applause of a single set of hands echoing in her mind as she put her guitar away.

Sighing and wondering how to fix her mistake, she wandered over to the bookcase and scanned the titles, coming across the book about the Wicked Witch which she put aside, remembering that Severus wanted to borrow it. The question foremost in her mind now was whether or not he regretted telling her about his past. After he'd told her the story, he'd suddenly been very reluctant to talk about it further. Even though she worried that just telling such a harrowing tale wouldn't help him as much as also talking about it afterwards, she'd acquiesced to his request for something not gut wrenching, and had told him the first part of the Star Wars saga.

He had still been disheartened when they went their separate ways after lunch, which was understandable but for some unknown reason Brie felt that it wasn't just telling her the story that had him looking so blue. Frustrated because she couldn't put her finger on why she felt that way, she grabbed a book at random and threw herself bad temperedly down on the couch.

Unable to concentrate she tossed the book aside a few minutes later and strode over to the desk. After pushing aside the plate of cookies, she sat and pulled out the stationary and pens she always brought from home because she disliked parchment and quills. One surefire way to take her mind off what was bothering her was to write to Evan, the manager of her reptile facility in Arizona, and check up on things. Evan also happened to be her closest friend back home and the only person who knew the truth about where she went fall to spring. She considered him her right and left hand man and trusted him completely. Sitting back and tapping the pen on her chin, she wondered briefly what to write.

_-Evan,_

_Your last letter made me laugh but I am sorry to hear about the broken ribs. You know I speak from experience when I say they heal quickly enough. Next time you fall down a hill try not to hit any trees or rocks on the way and, seriously, try not to kill yourself releasing the snakes. Catching a Massasauga? Fine go for it. Just make sure you get it back to the lab before you keel over._

_Everything is about the same here. Stranger in a strange land, I guess you could say._

_I will be back the last week in June so I would appreciate it if you could send over all the details regarding the summer filming schedule. Where are we going this year, Sri Lanka? I can't remember anymore. I'll also need lists of any of the snakes that need to be released back into the wild and any that need to be collected. Try to keep it on one continent this time if you can._

_Don't we need to return anything to Trinidad or Martinique? I could use a tan. We are totally using charter jets this year, I can't stand so many commercial flights._

_I also want to try to work in vacations for as many of the handlers as possible, you included, so send the summer work schedule too. I know you guys bust your butts while I'm away. We'll try to power through as much as we can while I'm there so things don't pile up on you after I leave again._

_Hopefully everything is going well at the lab. Keep me updated and I will see you in a few months. And don't you dare think about handling anything remotely venomous until those ribs are healed and you can move properly! If there is a venom milking day scheduled, change it. I'd rather lose some money than lose you. Always remember, do as I say not as I do!_

_-Brea_

She folded the letter, sealed it, and wrote Evan's name across the front before leaving her rooms and making her way to the Owlery. When she arrived, she walked over to a large Great Gray owl and ran her finger down his back to wake him up. He rustled his feathers and pulled his head out from under his wing. Turning his large yellow eyes toward her, he blinked slowly. Offering him an owl treat, she gave him a second to wake up before voicing her request.

"Got a job for you Icarus," she said softly as she handed him the letter. "Make sure Evan is alone before you give it to him, and stay till he sends something back."

Icarus hooted softly and took off with a rush of air and feathers. As Brie leaned on the windowsill and watched him till he was only a dot on the horizon, she remembered the day shortly before the end of her first year when Hagrid and Dumbledore had given Icarus to her as a going away present. They had said it was so she wouldn't forget Hogwarts and her new friends, but she knew that they were worried she wouldn't want to return for the next school year if she still had no way to contact anyone outside the school.

Throughout the latter part of that first year she had become increasingly agitated because she never knew what was going on at her own facility. One day she'd finally snapped and gone to Albus, needing a solution.

"_Albus for all I know there has been a mass breakout at the facility and all my staff and half the town of Sedona are dead." She placed her hands on his desk and leaned forward so she could look him in the eye. "I need to be able to contact at least one person back home!"_

"_Aren't you being a bit dramatic?" he asked, while holding out a small bowl filled with lemon drops._

_She took one and popped it in her mouth saying, "Absolutely not. One teaspoon of venom from some of those snakes is enough to kill ten full grown men, and my staff handles them all on an almost daily basis."_

"_But half the town of Sandoval?" He took a lemon drop for himself._

"_Sedona, and it could happen...maybe." She sensed defeat and sat abruptly. "A tornado... earthquake... zombie apocalypse..." she trailed off. "Ok so realistically not half the town of Sedona, barring some bizarre simultaneous breakout, but any one of my staff at anytime." She rose and began to pace around the office, unwilling to give up. "Albus, imagine how you would feel if you were trying to run the school by proxy and the school was filled with deadly creatures that had the potential to kill everyone. I know we need to polish up the style of the new class, but if I can't be kept informed while I am here, then I can't be here."_

_Albus stood and went to put his arm around Brie's shoulder. "I suppose we will have to find you a way then."_

"_Won't owls deliver to Muggles?" she questioned, having already put some thought into the subject. "Oh! Is America too far away to fly to?"_

"_Owls will deliver to whoever they are told to, but wouldn't you have a hard time explaining why your mail is picked up and delivered by an owl?" he inquired with raised eyebrows. _

"_Not as much trouble as you would think. Most of my friends are very open minded, and besides, they are used to weird things from me. I play with deadly animals! When I was ten I trained my cat to sit up, lay down and use the toilet!" She smiled and continued. "Anyway I would only need to contact the manager of the facility. Handily, he is also my closest friend and already thinks that I am overseas to teach. So I will just have to fill in a few gaps...hmmm a few really big unbelievable gaps actually." _

_She faltered, wondering if convincing Evan was going to be harder than she thought. "Alright, so it might take awhile to bring him up to speed, but after I get him drunk and the shock wears off, he will be perfectly fine. I hope." She shrugged and turned her face to Albus. "Unless you have another idea?"_

_He thought for a minute before replying, "There may be other ways, but your idea would be easiest as some larger owls can fly very long distances. Do you really think you can convince your friend?"_

"_It's worth a shot. Either he will believe me and I will be able to come back next year, or he'll think I'm crazy and quit, in which case I'll be up the creek no matter where I am," she replied. "I say we try. Send me an owl at the beginning of August. If I can convince Evan not to have me hauled off in a rubber truck, I'll come back next year so we can iron out the wrinkles in my curriculum. I should have it running well enough after another year that someone else can take it over after that."_

"_Fair enough," he chuckled_

_A week before the end of term Albus asked her to meet him in his office and he and Hagrid presented her with the owl, and their story about a present to remind her of Hogwarts. _

"_Now you can send him to me whenever you are able to convince your friend that you are not a nutter," Albus whispered to her with a smile. He pushed something small and rectangular into her hands "Take this in case you need something to convince him with. All you have to do is click it." _

_She looked down at what appeared to be a small silver cigarette lighter. "What does it do?" she asked sounding awed and cradling it carefully in her hands._

"_If you need to use it you will find out," he smiled as he watched her examine the Deluminator. "You can send it back with your new owl."_

It had taken an entire bottle of Tequila split between them to even get Evan to consider that she might be teaching young witches and wizards about non magical people at some hidden school of sorcery in Europe. She'd always suspected that the only reason he hadn't walked away was because of the deep respect, trust and understanding that had grown up between them during their years of association. You could learn to trust anyone when you risked your lives together on a daily basis, even when they were spouting seeming fairy tale nonsense.

"_Brie, you can not expect me to believe that you are teaching at a magic school. You just can't. I'm not five!"_

"_Evan, you've got to believe me, because it's true."_

_He looked at her, sudden concern dawning on his face. Crossing the room, which he'd previously been furiously pacing, he sat gently beside her and looked into her eyes for a minute._

"_Brea…" he started slowly, "Look, I know it's been really hard for you since Rogan and the others, but… you can't do this. You can't make up stuff to distract yourself. This has never been you."_

_She made a sound of disgust and gave him a shove on the shoulder before getting up to retrieve the tequila. "Don't do that to me," she said, secretly hurt that he'd go there, although she supposed, after the year she'd had following the deaths, it wasn't really that much of a stretch to make. _

_She came back with the bottle and two glasses, which she put on the table so she could fill them. Handing one to him she tried again. "Listen, I know it's nuts, OK? I know how it sounds and looks and all that. Poor Brie is breaking apart again. After what happened, I don't blame you. I really don't. I want to, but I can't." They each tossed back their drinks and Brie poured more. "But it's real, Evan. Magic is really a thing. Not like how we learned about it as kids, it's different than that. A lot different, but it's real, and I'm there and I see it everyday. I want to go back for another year, because there is so much left to learn and do, but I'm not going to do that unless I can be more involved here. And the only way that can happen is if you believe me, because you're going to have to start giving my mail… to an owl."_

"_Brie..."_

"_Think about it. Really think. Why can't you contact me while I'm there? Why don't I have an album full of pictures for you to see? You met the Headmaster when he was here to first recruit me. Explain him. Look at the owl out there, sitting and waiting where I asked him to." She gestured out the window where Icarus was peacefully sitting and peering inside. "You know me Evan. You know there were off things about this job. You asked me yourself when I was first planning to go. I never really answered any of those questions, did I?"_

_He downed the shot in his glass and poured another, sitting back with it and watching the liquid swirl around at the bottom. Brie could tell she'd gotten him thinking and prepared to double down on whatever method it took to convince him._

Even after a barrage of questions and many more shots, he had only been convinced when she had pulled the Deluminator from her pocket and clicked it, making every light in the room go out with a pop. She had clicked it again and the lights had flown from it back to the lamps.

They had talked more the next morning, both nursing nasty hangovers, and she had convinced him to quietly keep in touch with her by owl. She suspected he had only finally agreed because his head had been pounding as badly as hers, but at least during her second year she would know what was going on while she was away. She hadn't planned to return for this third year, as the schedule she was forced to keep to fulfill her contracts was back breaking, but somehow found herself at the school at the start of the year, anyway. She and Albus had already discussed the fact that she would most likely be back the next year as well.

Brie was about to push away from the window when she spotted Severus emerging from the Forbidden Forest with his arms full of weird looking flowers. She could tell by his hunched shoulders that he was still dispirited. She turned away from the window after he disappeared into the castle and sighed, still worried about him.

He didn't come to dinner that night, and she didn't see him between classes or at mealtimes throughout the next few days. No longer able to wait around and wonder if Severus was avoiding her, she snatched up the book he wanted to borrow and made her way toward the dungeons.

**AN: Thanks to the new faves and follows and to Ghostwriter71 for the very first review on this story! Keep 'em coming everyone!**


	6. Chapter 5: One Last Story

**AN: Thanks to the new favs and follows and to Ghostwriter71 for reviewing the last chapter. :) Hope to hear more from you guys with this new chapter. Let me know what you think!**

5- One Last Story

It had been a horrible day, and Severus was looking forward to relaxing with a glass of nettle wine and his new copy of Brewing Today, the quarterly potions publication. During morning classes some idiotic third year had melted a cauldron while attempting to make a simple shrinking solution, then later, the bloody Weasley twins had somehow blown their potion sky high, splattering the dungeon and everyone in it with swelling solution. As this happened at least once a year and he was a man who believed in learning from past experiences, he'd had plenty of Deflating Draught on hand.

After pouring a glass of wine, something he didn't normally indulge in except on the days that truly tried his patience, he sank into his favorite chair. He had been unable to shake the dark mood that had closed in around him that weekend no matter how many points he removed or how many detentions with Filch he gave out. His thoughts kept drifting back to Lily. Last night he had dreamed of her.

_They were sixteen or seventeen, playing on the swings in the park as they had when they were children. Neither spoke as they swung higher and higher. Lily let go of the chains that held the swing and flew through the air just as she had on the day so long ago, when he had watched her from behind the bushes._

_After landing lightly, she turned and held out her hand saying, "Sev, you have to stop, you have to come with me." Her beautiful green eyes were heart wrenchingly sad. "I can't wait anymore. I won't ask again."_

_Severus tried to get up but was unable to move or speak. He could only watch helplessly as Lily dropped her hand and slowly backed away never taking her eyes from his._

_There was a blinding flash of light and for a split second the only thing he could see through the brightness was Lily's sad eyes. He blinked and suddenly found himself standing in the ruins of Lily's house. Lighting zig-zagged through the night sky and James Potter lay motionless and face down on the floor by the door. Feeling the same crushing sadness and self loathing from ten years before, he looked toward the staircase that led to the second floor and involuntarily started to move toward it._

Severus had tossed in his sleep and strained his head away from the dream image of the staircase in Lily's home. He didn't want to go up there again, not ever, not even in a dream. He'd wrenched himself awake with a conscious effort and sat up panting and shaking. As he buried his face in his hands, a single sob had escaped. She had tried so many times to turn him away from dark magic. Now she was gone because he was a fool.

He hadn't been able to go back to sleep afterward.

Now, he frowned and studied the play of light and liquid in his wine glass as it sat on the side table. His dream of Lily wasn't the only thing on his mind that night. He still couldn't help but feel that while Brie had understood more that he had expected her to in terms of his past actions and connection with Lily, she still couldn't understand his guilt over her death. In his mind, he had been the cause. It didn't matter that Black had told the Dark Lord where to find Lily. He himself had been responsible for the Dark Lord targeting her family in the first place.

Exhausted, because of his lack of sleep, he drifted off, still sitting in his chair. This time he dreamed of Brie.

_They were walking side by side through a dense jungle and she was dragging something behind her. He tried to turn and see what it was but everything behind them was overly bright and blurry. All he could make out was a blur of greens and browns with the occasional burst of bright red or yellow. Whatever she was struggling to drag behind her was heavy and she was breathing in short gasps but she moved ahead steadily._

_He looked over and tried to ask where they were and what they were doing but once again found that he couldn't speak. Something snapped in the bushes next to him. She turned her head warily in the direction of the sound and he saw that her sapphire eyes were inexorably sad and that she had been crying hard. _

_He tried to reach out and put his hand on her shoulder, but she bled away like ink on parchment left out in the rain._

He woke as the image faded, more confused than ever, then realized that a knocking at his door had pulled him out of his dream. He rose feeling flustered and went to answer the door, finding Brie standing on the other side.

Holding up the book she had brought with her she said, "I'm using this as a flimsy excuse to come over and see how you are."

Unable to turn away the concern in her eyes, Severus stood aside and invited her in while saying, "That's honest at least."

He poured another glass of wine and offered it to her. "I'm fine. Just...a bit down I suppose." He gestured toward the sofa meaning for her to take a seat, then turned to pick up his own wine. "I haven't been avoiding you," he added softly, almost as an after thought.

As she accepted the wine, she handed over the book and took a seat. "I didn't say that you had bee," she said, with raised eyebrows as she took a sip. "Interesting, very interesting." Smiling at Severus' suddenly hunched shoulders, she continued, "Even if you have been avoiding me, it's ok."

Severus turned to protest, even though he had been avoiding her a little... a lot, but she held up her hand to stop him. "I said if, Severus. IF you have been avoiding me, it's ok. It would just be nice to know why, IF you were." She took another sip of wine. "But you're not, so we don't have a problem."

_'How does she DO that?' _ he thought to himself. "Well, maybe I was avoiding you just a little," he relented.

"A little?" She smiled, holding her finger and thumb a half inch away from each other. "I was contemplating bringing you some food to be sure you weren't starving yourself." The smile turned into a smirk almost before he could blink.

"I had the house elves bring meals here," he mumbled

"Well that's good," she answered. After taking a deep breath, she burst out, " Listen Severus, I'm sorry about the other day. I didn't know you had such a huge thing weighing you down. I thought you were just extra annoyed by school stuff or something. I shouldn't have pushed you, I just thought that talking about whatever it was that was bothering you would make you feel better. I didn't mean to upset you further or make you relive those hard times, or be horribly nosy. I'm really really sorry."

He was shocked by the rapid flow of her words. It was as if she couldn't get them out fast enough. "Don't be sorry," he hastily tried to assure her. "You didn't push me to tell you anything. I have been meaning to tell you something about it for months, but didn't know how to start and I didn't know how much I should tell you." He sipped his wine. "I couldn't very well have just burst out with, Say, did you know that almost ten years ago I killed my best friend, and next year her son is coming to the school, now could I?"

"You could have but I wouldn't have believed you." She frowned at his choice of words. "You didn't kill her, you tried to protect her."

"She is dead because of the information that I provided to the Dark Lord," he said shortly. "Please don't try to convince me otherwise."

"Ok," she relented, uncharacteristically easily. "I guess I know how you feel a little bit."

"Actually, that is what has been bothering me," Severus saw the opening and went for it despite the uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He didn't normally talk about such things, mostly because he didn't have anyone he felt close enough to talk to. "I don't think you can understand the guilt that I live with everyday because I was the cause of her death. How could you? How could anyone?"

Understanding dawned on Brie's face. "Now I see," she said. "I know that it is hard to believe, but I do know how you feel, in a way." She held up her hand again when she saw him open his mouth to protest. "Let me tell you another story. A story only one other person really knows, and he pretty much made me tell him for my own good. It's only fair to warn you that you won't like it, and I probably will be crying by the end."

"You don't have to," he said, alarmed because she hated to cry and did so rarely, which made it so much worse when she actually did.

"No I do. It's important. For me and for you. I should be able to do this. I should." She took a deep breath and let it out on a long sigh. Apparently, there would be no once upon a time for this story. "It's my fault that my husband died," she began bluntly and immediately stopped, her voice catching very slightly at the end.

"You said he was bitten while trying to capture some kind of venomous snake," he replied, puzzled. She didn't talk much about her husband's death. Occasionally, seemingly dependent on what mood she was in, she would tell one of her adventure stories involving him, but even that could be considered a pretty rare occurrence.

"He was, but what I didn't tell you was that I was with him when it happened." She swallowed hard. "Rogan and I were filming and collecting specimen in Gabon, Africa. Normally we would have had people with us, manning the cameras and mics and lights and stuff, but we had wrapped up filming a week before we expected to, so the film crew took the week off. Rogan and I still had to try to collect at least one Gaboon viper for our lab, so we packed up our supplies and went off into the jungle to try one last time. We thought we might have a better chance of finding what we needed if we weren't bogged down by the camera crew. It's pretty much impossible to move quietly through the jungle with that many people. We had planned to hike in for two days, then hike back out in time to meet up with the crew and catch the flight home." She stopped again when her voice hitched, and took a sip of wine.

"We couldn't find that species of viper to save our lives, so we took a chance and kept hiking for one more day. We stopped for a break near a little pond that was fed by a stream when, like magic, a Gaboon viper swam right by." A tear formed at the corner of her eye, and she tried to clear her throat as she swiped at it. She missed and it rolled down her cheek.

"Rogan sprang up and dove right in without even a stick to handle the thing with. I didn't know what was going on at first, but then I saw him grab it by the tail and start to make his way back to the bank. He was calling to me for the handling tools so that he could safely get it out of the water, but they were tied to my bag and I couldn't... I couldn't..." She broke off with a sudden choked sob.

"I don't think I can finish," she said with one hand covering her eyes. "I didn't think it would be this hard after so many years. It shouldn't be." She drew a shuttering breath.

Severus moved to sit next to her on the sofa and awkwardly put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to his side. It felt like an appropriate gesture, given the circumstances. "It's alright," he whispered, turning his face into her hair without thinking.

"No it's not!" she exclaimed suddenly, startling him. "I shouldn't still be falling apart over it." She shook her head in disgust, and bumped his nose. He backed away a bit and dropped his arm from her shoulder as she looked up, seeming surprised that he was still so close to her.

They sat in silence for a few minutes each lost in their own separate thoughts. Finally Brie asked softly, "Severus, the other day you said that you can extract emotions and memory from other people's minds. Could you do that now? I don't think I can finish, but I need you to know what happened. I need someone to really know." She looked at him imploringly and he couldn't refuse.

"Bring the memory to the front of your mind," he said softly while turning to face her. "Now look into my eyes." Brie turned her face toward him and looked into his eyes with complete trust in him. It was a look he was unused to receiving from anyone but Albus. "Legilimens."

Suddenly bits of her memories filled his mind. Some he recognized from the few times he'd slipped and started probing her thoughts. He saw palm trees blowing gently in a breeze; a large black cobra standing with its hood spread wide and hissing; a dozen candles on a decorated cake; a laughing young girl who looked much like Brie, but with brown eyes; a black cat curled in a patch of sunshine; and, finally, a jungle.

Despite the bandana covering most of her hair, he recognized Brie kneeling on the ground a little way away from a small pond. She was struggling to untie the strings that held a large hook and a set of metal tongs to her backpack. Severus could hear a man's voice calling out for her.

"_Brea, come on, I don't know how much longer I can hold on! He's feisty."_

_Brie continued to tug at the strings holding the instruments while calling back. "You were the last one to tie this stuff up! Then you go diving in the water without so much as a warning shout!" She wiped her sweaty, muddy palms on her shorts, then continued to pull. The instruments finally came free and Brie jumped up shouting, "Got em'! I'm coming." _

_She ran toward the water with the hook and tongs in one hand, just as a tall man with sandy colored hair and hazel eyes walked up the bank holding a long, heavily bodied snake, shaking water out of his face, and shouting, _

"_Woohoo! He's really agitated, he doesn't want to be here! Stand back."_

"_Be careful Rogan!" Brie held the hook out toward him and pulled a large white cloth bag from her belt, just as the snake looped up over its own body and sank its fangs into Rogan's right forearm so quickly that he had no time to react. "Oh my God, no!" she shouted running the last few steps toward him._

"_Get the bag open!" he shouted as she approached. Brie held the bag open as he lifted the snake up and shook it off his arm so that it dropped inside. He then immediately sat on the ground and examined the bite area. "I can't believe it got me," he said weakly. "Those are supposed to be docile and sluggish."_

_Brie twisted the top of the bag around itself several times then tied it in a knot. "Let me see, maybe it was a dry bite," she said with suppressed panic in her voice. She looked at the arm that Rogan held out and cursed under her breath before dashing back to her bag and dragging it over to him. _

"_It could be a dry bite. It could," she sounded unconvinced. "Lay down!" she ordered as she rooted through the bag and came up with a long roll of bandages and a pair of scissors. "Lose the sleeve." she said, handing him the scissors. As Brie quickly searched the surrounding area, Rogan used the scissors to cut the sleeve from his shirt._

_She came back with a thick stick, snapping it over her knee so that it was slightly shorter than his arm. Taking his arm and pressing the stick to the inside of it, she started to roll the bandages around both stick and arm from wrist to shoulder. "Too tight!" Rogan grunted, but Brie ignored him._

"_It's gotta be tight if you want to keep that arm." As she finished, she tucked in the end of the bandage. "By the time I get back to the village and bring someone out here it will be too late," she said a little desperately._

"_I feel fine," he said, getting up._

_Brie pushed him back down saying, "No, don't move, maybe I can get some branches and make some sort of sled." She began to look around._

_Rogan stood saying, "There is no way you are going to be able to drag me through this jungle Brea!"_

"_Don't tell me what I can't do," she answered still looking around for sturdy branches and vines._

_He walked over to the bag holding the snake and picked it up along with the tools that Brie had dropped. "Well you can't because I won't let you. I'm OK, it probably was a dry bite. Lets just start back. We won't stop to sleep tonight."_

"_Rogan, seriously. That snake holds the record for largest amount of venom delivered in a single bite. What are the chances that it just gave you a dry bite?"_

"_Well, we are wasting time arguing then. The only way for me to get out of here is under my own steam, so let's go!" He picked up a second pack from against a tree and started to walk away from the waters edge._

_Brie grabbed her own pack and ran after him calling, "At least let me carry the stuff! The more you carry, the faster your heart rate will be, and the faster the venom will work its way through your system!"_

"_Fine, here. Thanks for the toxicology lesson." He smiled and handed everything over. Brie put one backpack on her back and the other on her front and carried the bag with the snake in it in her hand. They continued to walk, pushing aside brush as they went. Neither spoke for some time, but as the sun started to set Rogan finally stopped and sat down against a tree saying, "I've got to sit, I've been feeling woozy for a half hour now." _

_Brie stopped struggling with all the weight and dropped the gear, kneeling down next to him, offering a container of water, which he took gratefully. "I guess we can stop hoping its a dry bite," he said listlessly. "My throat is so swollen I can barely swallow. I don't think I'm going to make it Brea, it's happening really fast. It must have been a ton of venom." He unwound the bandages covering his arm, revealing the bite wound which was turning a very unpleasant shade of black and swelling rapidly. "The dizziness is probably hypotension."_

_Brie choked back a sob and threw her arms around Rogan. "I love you," she sobbed into his neck. _

_With tears starting to flow, he put his uninjured arm around her and buried his face in her hair. "I love you too. I'm so sorry." They stayed together that way for a long time until suddenly Rogan broke away and gripped his injured arm with a groan._

"_Oh God it hurts!" he said. "Brea, I'm scared." _

_He tried to take her hand but his movements had become clumsy and uncoordinated. Brie took his hand in hers, held it to her cheek and kissed his palm. "Try not to be scared sweetheart. I'm right here with you." She breathed deeply trying to control her tears. "I'm right here and I love you. I'll always love you." _

_Rogan tried to smile but suddenly his face contorted with pain and his body started to convulse. White foam formed on his lips and ran down one cheek. After a few minutes he went still. Brie placed her fingers on his neck checking for a pulse, her tears now flowing freely. She laid him on the ground and pulled a blanket out of her pack. After covering him with the blanket, she knelt and lifted his head onto her lap, cleaning off his face with a bandana she pulled from her pocket. _

_All through the night Brie stayed with Rogan running her hand over his hair. When the sun finally started to rise, __and the birds started to sing,__ she checked his pulse again then bent over him sobbing her heart out, moaning and shaking with grief. __The singing birds went silent, and took flight all at once at the sound of her wails._

_When she had no more tears left she gently placed his head on the ground and pulled the blanket up over his face. With her own face grim and set she rose and started to gather branches and vines. _

Severus pulled back out of Brie's memory and looked at her. Tears were coursing down her cheeks as she drew a shaky breath and said, "I didn't know that I would see it too."

"I'm sorry, I should have told you." Something clicked in Severus's mind as he looked into Brie's sad eyes. He frowned in concentration and ran a hand through his hair. "Right before you came here tonight I fell asleep briefly and dreamed you and I were walking through a jungle and you were dragging something behind you. Everything behind us was blurry so I couldn't see what it was. You'd been crying."

"I lashed a bunch of branches together and pulled him out with me. It took four days." She wiped the tears from her cheeks and thought for a moment. "What do you think the dream means?" she asked.

He assumed that he must have caught a glimpse of the events one of the times he'd accidentally entered her mind. Avoiding what he supposed should probably have been a confession of his mind probing slip ups, he deflected, "I'm not sure, but for now it's not important." He hadn't meant to get distracted from what he had just seen. From the way Brie usually spoke of her husband and his death, a rare occasion in and of itself, he would have never guessed that it had been such a horrible and drawn out ordeal for her. "Brie, I was wrong when I said you couldn't understand how I felt. You think it was your fault because you couldn't get him those tools quickly enough, don't you?"

She nodded, heaved a large sigh, and kept going. Severus had assumed that she'd come to the end of her story, but he was wrong. "Six months after Rogan died, my parents and my sister drove out to Arizona to visit because I was too busy trying to run the facility without him to go home to see them. They were in a multi car crash with a semi truck full of propane. No one in the wreck survived. Everything burned up, including all the bodies." Brie closed her eyes on fresh tears. "Worst year of my life and all my fault."

Severus was so shocked he didn't know what to say for a moment. "It wasn't your fault. Neither was your fault."

"Is it your fault Lily is gone?" she asked pointedly.

"That's different..." he began.

"No. It's very similar. Lily may not have been killed if you hadn't provided Lord Whoever with information about the prophecy. Rogan may still be alive if I had gotten to him quicker. Then my family would not have been worried about me being on my own and they wouldn't have been on that highway. How are any of those maybes really different? And, deep down, would it make a difference to either of us anyway?"

She rubbed her eyes. "How do we know that Lord Whoever wouldn't have found out about the prophecy some other way or that Rogan wouldn't have gotten bitten at some other point during that trip or on the next one or the next? Nothing was really our fault Severus, but that doesn't change how we feel and it sure doesn't bring any of them back."

Severus thought about this for a minute, marveling once more at her pinpoint accuracy. She had once again punched right through to the center and grabbed at the roots of the problem.

"I am not going to be able to sleep tonight." She groaned while briefly covering her face with her hands.

"That makes two of us." He didn't want her to be alone while she still looked so woebegone, and truthfully he also needed the company, so he asked, "What should we do to pass the time?"

Brie looked at him in surprise. "You want me to stay?"

"I need the company and I think you do too." He shrugged and blushed slightly, for which he cursed himself.

Noticing his blush she said with a shaky smile, "No more stories, ok?"

"Absolutely agreed." Returning her smile, he repeated, "How should we pass the time?"

"You could teach me how to make a potion," she said. It was not the first time she had broached the subject.

"Perhaps chess," he answered with a raised eyebrow.

"Will you ever teach me to make potions?" she questioned. "I am really interested to see if the potions I put together will...you know...be actual potions that work or just a bunch of gross stuff floating in a cauldron. It seems the one branch of magic that a Muggle might..."

"I know, I am interested in finding out also, but not tonight," he cut her off, already knowing where the conversation was headed. He didn't have the heart to tell her that, while she could cut and dice and stir perfectly, nothing she could put together would ever take on any magical properties. With a sigh he asked, "Why do you want to find out so badly?"

"Severus, I'm basically a chemist. A PhD in toxinology requires lots and lots of time in the chem lab. To me potions is the chemistry of the wizarding world. I want to see if I can do it." Severus nodded. "Anyway, chess it is." Looking slightly more cheerful, Brie sat on one side of a small table while Severus retrieved his wizard's chess set.

"I still need to find out about these PhD things. You've mentioned it once or twice before but I don't know what it means," Severus admitted as he set up the pieces.

"Think of it as on par with your Master in potions. I went through a lot of schooling and a lot of testing and now, according to the scholars, I know more then anyone without a PhD about venom."

She watched him carefully place the pieces on the board. He knew it amused her that he was always so meticulous, placing each and every piece so they faced exactly the same way.

"I have a Masters too, you know. That is one step down from a PhD," she explained when he glanced up at her with a questioning expression. "It's in herpetology. I keep toying with the idea of going back and continuing till it's another PhD, but it would be really hard to do that at this point in time. Maybe someday though. It's just in my nature to want to learn things, to figure them out."

He remembered how many times, before they had become friends, he had come across her in the library studying one book or another, making notes in those Muggle notebooks she always brought with her, and chuckled. "And what have you found?"

She frowned and made a little growling noise in her throat. "That magic breaks all the laws of science and drives me up a wall."

He chuckled again. "I suppose it would be human nature to want to see if there was anything magical you could achieve."

"You bet it is." She replied. "It's not even really about what I might or might not be able to achieve magically, you know. It's about finding connections between magic and science and physics and all that. Finding the WHY and the HOW of it all. Putting it all into terms that don't make my head spin. You wizards break so many of the laws of nature that it makes me want to cry sometimes. Everything in the world that I 'know' is turned on it's head daily here. When I first came, I couldn't read enough about everything and eventually I came across information on potions and wondered just how magical you have to be if you are already using magical items and you don't need wands or spells."

"I can use the passwords and the paintings, I can use Albus' Deluminator thingy." After the board was set up and he was seated opposite her, she told a pawn to move. "And the silly Muggle can use the wizard's chess set," she mused mostly to herself as she watched the piece move forward.

"What happened to the amazing Muggle?" He asked absently as he prodded a pawn forward.

"Feels like she was run over by an elephant herd." She studied the board. "More likely that the amazing part is just a rumor."

"Not from what I just heard and saw." He looked up. "I hope you won't ever believe it if someone tells you differently."

"Severus, if I really believed half of what most people, wizard or Muggle, say about me I would be in some padded cell somewhere, tucked away from the world for my own protection. Don't worry about me, I'll be my old sparkling, talented, beautiful, smart, engaging self soon enough. Will you be ok?"

"You forgot humble." he chuckled. "I suppose I will be back to myself soon enough as well."

"Oh, help us all," she said as she took a pawn.

Severus pointed his wand at her under the table and non verbally performed a tickling charm. As she giggled and squirmed and protested the unfairness of his wand usage, he felt relief trickle through him. She understood, as completely as anyone could, his feelings regarding Lily, and had put herself through considerable emotional distress to make sure he understood why. Canceling the charm and taking her knight with his bishop, he found himself glad that he had found a friend in Gabrielle Waters. "Do you remember the night you told me about falling out of that tree in Brazil?" he asked as they watched the chess pieces struggle.

"Sure, it wasn't long after you walked in on me baking cookies at one in the morning," she said while studying the board.

Momentarily sidetracked he chuckled and said, "I was thinking about that the other day."

Brie looked up, "So was I. Weird."

Severus felt a small shiver run up his spine. "That is odd. Anyway," He continued, ignoring the shiver, "I think the night you told me about falling was the night that we became tentative friends. I remember thinking that anyone who had re-learned how to walk only to go back and continue the activities that had caused the injuries in the first place was worth getting to know better."

"I'm sure I am honored." Rolling her eyes at his choice of phrase she continued to contemplate her next move. "If a potion went wrong on you and you were badly injured, would you quit potion making?" she inquired as she took another pawn.

"Of course not."

"I guess you and I are a lot alike then. We are both dedicated, or stubborn, or brave, or stupid. The trick is figuring out which it is." She spread her hands and shrugged. "Personally I'm not sure which category I fall into. On one hand, my work with anti-venom saves lives and my documentaries educate people about wildlife. On the other hand both those jobs injure me almost constantly and have a very real potential for death."

Severus contemplated this. "I think, with you, the answer is all of the above. With an emphasis on dedicated and brave and a minimum of stupid. With some loony thrown in for good measure." He grinned on his own, a very very rare event. Usually any grinning he did was mirroring Brie's own infectious grin.

"Ahh, I forgot about crazy. Definitely a little crazy. Maybe a little more than a minimum of stupid also," she replied. "What about you? Everything you told me the other day points to brave and I know from experience we can throw in dedicated...and stubborn." She snickered.

"With much more that the minimum of stupid," he finished with a sigh, his grin gone.

"Maybe in the past, but I haven't seen it since I have known you," she said. "Now lets stop felling sorry for ourselves. Its not doing anyone any good. Move already!"

"Just because you don't see it doesn't mean its not there," He moved his queen in for the kill.

"Doesn't mean it actually is either," she countered, refusing to let him put himself down this time.


	7. Chapter 6: Gifts for a Muggle

**AN: thanks to the new favs and follows. It's nice to see people enjoying the story enough to want to know when more comes out. And special thanks to Ghostwriter71 for the review of the last chapter. I love 'em. Keep 'em comin'. **

6- Gifts for a Muggle 

After Severus beat her at chess for the third time, Brie rose and said, "Well that's the last crushing I can take," as she stretched her arms over her head. She wasn't used to people beating her at things. It was another reason she liked spending time with Severus, losing at things was probably good for her. "I'm going to go try and get some sleep so I'm not a zombie tomorrow during classes."

"Are you sure you will be alright?" Severus asked, looking concerned.

She knew she would be eventually. It was one thing to simply tell of an upsetting event. It was another thing altogether to essentially live it over again in your mind, exactly how it had happened. She just wished she'd been prepared for it, but knowing he was concerned made her smile. "I'll be fine. I lived through it when it really happened, one restless night will be a piece of cake. Thanks for letting me stay while I calmed down." She made her way to the door. "Don't worry about me Severus," she said as she left.

As she walked through the halls, she tried not to dwell on what had just happened. It wouldn't do any good. It had been the worst and hardest time of her life and it had taken a long time for her to function normally afterwards. She had no interest in sliding back down to the very dark place she'd been in at the time.

Going back to filming had been hard enough. Now, whenever she went out to film the entire crew was fitted out with GPS tracking devices and no one was allowed far from the main group with less than three people in their party. It wouldn't help Rogan, but she'd be damned if she or any part of her crew would go though anything like that ever again. Getting the production company to pay for the GPS tracking had been hard. She basically had to refuse to start filming again after Rogan's death until they gave in and added them to the list of required equipment.

With a sigh she entered her rooms. After changing out of her clothes, she went over to her dresser and took out the framed picture of Rogan she kept in the top drawer. Smiling down at his handsome face, she closed her eyes and brought a good memory into her mind, hoping to help herself sleep better.

They were next to a stream, laying on a blanket in the sun. She had her head on Rogan's chest and he was running his fingers through her hair. They got up and started to walk through a field toward the woods. As they went Rogan picked a daisy growing near the side of the trail and turned to her, tucking it behind her ear. She took both his hands in hers and pulled him toward her as she rose on her toes and tilted her head back to kiss him. The sunlight slanted over them, warm and golden bright.

The memory faded and Brie put Rogan's picture away. She knew she would dream of him tonight, hopefully the good memory would make it a good dream. At least she could hope. It was such a small short memory, but it was one of her favorites. Crawling into bed and closing her eyes, she waited for the inevitable.

_She was walking along a rocky dried creek bed in Sedona. Normally she would be out like this looking for coral snakes or rattlers or whatever else was needed at the time, but she sensed that wasn't why she was here now so she walked steadily forward, not bothering to look under rocks or to soften her foot steps. As she walked, she gazed at the red rock formations all around her, as always, awed by their beauty._

_Rounding a curve in the creek bed she suddenly knew why she was here. Rogan was sitting on the bank of the creek. He was wearing an old, faded and heavily patched pair of jeans. Feeling a fist squeeze her heart, she made her way up the bank and sat down next to him. "Hey sweetheart. Still haven't gotten rid of those horrible pants?" she said as the fist squeezed her poor heart even harder._

_He smiled and put his hand on her knee. "Hey." They looked out into the setting sun. "I like these pants."_

"_So did the moths," she chuckled "I knew I'd see you tonight. I miss you." She put her hand on top of his and laced their fingers together. "It's hard without you."_

"_You are so strong Brea, stronger than this." He brushed his other hand across her cheek. "Don't remember me with sorrow, remember me with joy."_

"_I try," she answered. I just didn't expect to fall apart over it again this many years later."_

_They sat in comfortable silence for a while before Brie asked, "So, getting any action in the afterlife?"_

_Rogan threw his head back and laughed. "Thats my Brea." He squeezed her hand one last time saying, "You'll be OK," before fading away, leaving Brie alone, once again, to watch the sunset by herself._

She woke with a groan and rolled over, pulling the covers up around her ears. She hated her overactive brain for being able to put together a dream that had her feeling like she'd actually just had a real conversation with her dead husband. Still, it had put together worse.

_'Not as bad as it could have been,'_ she thought as she drifted off to sleep again, this time without dreams.

The next week or so passed by fairly uneventfully. Classes, meals, grading essays, over seeing detentions -somehow she always seemed to get roped into supervising the types of detentions where the students were required to clean Muggle-style- all passed by in a blur of routine that made Brie a little antsy.

One morning she was pleased to see Icarus fly in with the other post owls. He landed on the table with an unusually loud thud. "What's up buddy?" she said as she untied the roll of papers that was attached to his leg, surprised at the weight. "Wow, poor guy. Here," She picked up a piece of toast and offered it to him. Icarus grabbed it and flew off to the Owlery for some much needed rest.

"What the heck did Evan send that is so heavy?" She wondered out loud as she unrolled the papers, finding two small packages. "There's the problem," she said to Albus as she pointed to the packages and smoothed out the letter.

**-Brie**

**Here is half of the crap you wanted plus a few useful tid-bits and an early birthday present. I sent along the filming schedule and trail maps and all that other stuff for the next film. Open the heavy package to find out where you are headed this year. Hint: It's not Sri Lanka.**

**The other package is your birthday present, I hope I didn't break the owl by sending both packages with him. When he is rested, send him back and I'll get the rest of the stuff you wanted out to you.**

**Everything is fine here. No problems at all. My ribs are all healed. See you soon. Bring me back something fun. NO more weird wizard balloon bubble gum.**

**-Evan**

"He's got handwriting like a serial killer," she muttered to herself as she examined the packages. "Well now, here's a dilemma," Brie said. "Do I open the early birthday present first or do I open the other one to find out where my next exciting adventure is going to be?" She tapped a finger to her chin. "It worries me a little that he didn't just tell me in the letter...that can't be good."

Answers came simultaneously from each side of her. "Open the present," Albus said as he picked up the brightly wrapped package and shaking it next to his ear. "Don't you want to know what it is?"

"Open this one," Severus put in, pointing to the other package. "Find out now, then if you don't like it you can make yourself feel better by opening the present."

"Oh good idea. Severus wins," she said as she tore the plain brown paper off the larger package, revealing one of her own well worn field guides. She groaned as she read the title. "Malaysia. Why did it have to be Malaysia?"

She pushed the book to the side, laid her head on her hands and groaned again. Albus patted her on the back while looking a little concerned. Slightly taken aback by her reaction Severus picked up the field guide and flipped through it asking, "Whats wrong with Malaysia?"

Brie raised her head off her hands. "Nothing really. Malaysia's great, it's just a pain to film there because it is split in two by the South China Sea. Then you have the annual southwest monsoon season which runs from April to October and the northeast monsoon season which is from October to February." She started to tick off other points on her fingers, "There are about ten different species of semi arboreal pit vipers, so more tree climbing is in my future. Then there are several species of Kraits, whose venom is highly neurotoxic but they are easily mistaken for harmless wolf snakes, so you've got to be careful. Oh, and there are coral snakes, also highly neurotoxic but very rare, so of course we will be looking for those."

She paused for breath, "But the best, the absolute kicker, are the three species of cobra. Not only do they have the monocled cobra, a very nasty feisty little cobra, but they also have a type of spitting cobra. Those little buggers don't even have to bite, they can literally spit venom into your eyes and mouth from five or six feet away. Then they have the king cobra. The world's largest venomous snake, nineteen feet long and twenty pounds. A full grown specimen can stand up almost six feet. In case you haven't noticed that's just a wee bit taller than me, and they have a strike range of over a third of their body length. Add to that the half inch fangs that inject venom like a hypodermic needle and the venom itself, which is potent enough to kill a full grown Asian elephant in less than three hours and you've got yourself a nasty little package."

Both Severus and Albus were staring at her now, wearing identical looks of concern, so Brie added hastily, "But none of that will be a problem for highly trained individuals such as myself, or my staff and crew." This didn't seem to help so she continued, "Plus that's only a small portion of the fauna there. They have tons of different non venomous snake species and harmless lizards and frogs, a few tortoises and all sorts of neat bugs. Not to mention mammals like orangutans, monkeys, macaques, flying squirrels, bears, otters, mongoose..." She trailed off as they both continued to stare at her. "Stop looking at me like that! I feel like some sort of side show exhibit."

Albus looked toward Severus and said with a smile, "You know Severus, I bet we would be rolling in Galleons if we set up an exhibit. Think of it, 'Hogwarts' Amazing Death Defying Muggle!', we could toss deadly snakes in the enclosure and have demonstrations every few hours."

"You get to try to cage her," Severus replied, "I have a feeling you will have a very hard time, even if you use magic."

Amused, Brie broke in, "I have a feeling Albus could toss me across the room with the smallest flick of his wand, that's why I try not to get him super angry, and I don't defy death, I sort of side step it."

"Why don't you try to not make me angry?" Severus asked

"Because you are so funny when you're angry," she answered, trying hard to keep her face impassive as she turned to Albus, who also looked like he was trying to resist the urge to smile. "So, 'Hogwarts' Amazing Muggle, Who Jumps Out of Death's Way', sounds much less impressive. It probably shouldn't even have that amazing in there." She tossed a grin back at Severus. "I guess you will have to give up the dream Albus. Sorry."

"I suppose you should open this then," he replied, handing her the second package.

"That's right, I have a present!" She took the package and started to unwrap it, revealing a small box. "It was a good idea to open this one second. Oh, sweet!" she exclaimed as she lifted the lid and pulled out a large Swiss army knife. "He remembers that I lost mine when we were filming in Vietnam last summer." She flipped it open and examined the blades and other tools that folded out. "I dropped the damn thing in a rice paddy and couldn't find it again no matter how long I sifted through goop. Oh wow, this is a really good one."

Both Severus and Dumbledore looked on with interest as she flipped the tools open and closed. Brie assumed that they'd never come across anything quite like it before. "I was under the impression that women enjoyed getting gifts like jewelry," Severus commented to no one in particular.

"Not this woman," she happily replied, while examining the saw blade she had just unfolded. "Although I never could resist a pretty necklace," she added with a chuckle.

Later on that same day, Brie went up to the Owlery to check on Icarus. "Hey buddy," she said, locating him perched in the rafters. "You doing OK?"

Icarus flew down and perched on the windowsill nearest to where she was standing. She went over and ruffled his feathers as she fed him a few of the owl treats she had picked up while supervising the last Hogsmead outing with Minerva. "Whenever you are ready, you can head back again. Evan has some more stuff for you." Icarus nipped at her finger. "Nothing heavy this time, I promise." She laughed. "No rush, I have plenty to keep me busy for now." Satisfied that the owl was alright, she turned and started down the stairs.

Later that week, while she was in his office, Albus presented Brie with a brightly wrapped package. Snakes in each of the four House color combinations slithered all over the paper wrapping. "I thought the idea of an early birthday present seemed like fun," he said as he handed it over to her.

Charmed by the thought and delighted at the wrapping paper, she hugged him. "Albus you didn't have to get me anything!" She examined the paper more closely, watching the snakes make loops and figure eights. "I don't want to unwrap it. It's too pretty."

"Oh, just tear it open," Severus said dryly from his seat across the room.

Brie hadn't noticed him when she had first entered, but smiled when she heard his slightly sarcastic comment. "Hey, this is like a mini party with two of my favorite wizards. How fun! My birthday isn't for another two days you know."

"Yes, but celebrating early gives us the element of surprise," Albus said as he flicked his wand toward a bookcase. It slid to the side, revealing a hidden room full of people, all of whom spilled out as soon as the secret door moved aside. Brie jumped and dropped Albus' present in astonishment.

"Oh thank goodness," Minerva exclaimed breathlessly, as she handed Brie a present wrapped in Gryffindor colors. "I don't know how we all fit in there along with Hagrid." She turned and looked down at Professor Flitwick, who seemed a bit flattened. "Are you alright Filius?" she asked as she reached into her pocket and drew out a handful of marbles. She waved her wand, causing the marbles to transfigure into balloons, which rose to float near the ceiling.

"Yes, I'm fine," Flitwick squeaked as he straightened his pointed wizard's hat and handed Brie another present, this one thin and flat, wrapped in Ravenclaw blue. "Happy Birthday!" He also waved his wand and confetti started to fall from the ceiling, vanishing as it floated down.

Pamona came next with a present wrapped in canary yellow, for Huffelpuff, followed by Poppy, who carried a small striped package with a bow attached, which shimmered and changed colors. Both presents were pushed into Brie's already full arms and both wands were waved, producing champagne flutes and several self pouring bottles of champagne, both of which proceeded to distribute themselves without assistance.

Hagrid was the last to exit the secret room. He scooped the tottering pile of presents out of Brie's arms with one large hand and placed them on a small table. "Happy birthday to yeh Brie! I got summat fer yeh too, but it can't be wrapped, so I'll jus' give it to yeh when yeh open the rest." Brie was slightly alarmed that whatever it was Hagrid had gotten her couldn't be wrapped, considering some of the creatures he had introduced her to, which he considered cute and harmless, but she was still too surprised to worry about it much.

"I can't believe you guys did all this for me," she said softly as she looked around at the balloons and confetti and champagne bottles that were pouring themselves. "Thank you so much."

She and the staff had come a long way since the awkward greetings and idle chit chat of her first year, and she was truly touched. Albus patted her on the back before walking around his desk and taking the Disillusionment Charm off a small frosted cake. "We would have done this in past years, but you've never mentioned when your birthday was before," he said. "We assumed it was sometime during the summer."

"I still didn't mention it this year," she chuckled. "Evan gave it away."

"It doesn't matter because we know now!" sang out Pomona as she sipped champagne. "Open your presents! I'm dying to see what everyone got you. No one here has really ever had to think of what to get a Muggle before. It was quite a challenge, let me tell you! Things that are normal to us fascinate you to no end. We have been discussing it for days."

"Ahh so that's why conversations have been ending abruptly everywhere I go lately." Brie laughed as she sat down near the pile of presents, noticing that there was now one wrapped in Slytherin green. "I thought I was getting fired." This comment was met with blank looks. "Sacked," she translated. Everyone laughed. "Should I open yours first then, Pomona?" she asked, reaching for the bright yellow package.

"Take care to keep it upright," Pomona said as Brie tore the wrapping away from a small plant that looked sort of like an octopus that had been buried in a pot. It was a mass of springy tentacle like tendrils. "It's a flitterbloom plant," she explained as Brie examined it. "It's tendrils wave if you put your hand near it." Brie did so, causing the tendrils to sway and move in the direction of her palm. It stopped as she took her hand away. Pomona continued, "It looks just like Devil's Snare but it is completely non threatening."

"I love plants, thank you so much!" Brie said, thinking that she would have to leave it at the school during the summer. Maybe Lully would take care of it for her.

Unable to wait any longer, Hagrid, who Brie had grown particularly close to, considering their shared interests, thrust his hand into one of the inside pockets of his long black coat and withdrew a closed fist. He held his fist out to Brie and opened it, revealing a small white salamander sitting on his palm. "It's a fire salamander," he said excitedly. "They live right in fires, but they can las' outside of one for abou' six hours if yeh feed 'em pepper." The little salamander sneezed as Hagrid continued, "I thought yeh'd like it, bein' interested in snakes an' lizards an' all."

"Wow, Hagrid, he's great! But he has to live in fire?" she questioned, looking slightly concerned. "That's going to be a little tough," she began, but Minerva cut in, holding out the scarlet wrapped gift.

"Wait, open this one," she said, handing it to Brie who tore off the paper revealing a small glass jar full of blue flames. "They are bluebell flames," Minerva explained. "It is waterproof and portable. I thought it would be useful on your crazy Muggle outdoor trips. You can pour it out of the jar onto a pile of logs to start a fire, then you can scoop some back into the jar to take with you again." She waved her wand, producing another small jar. "Pour some of the flames in this jar and you can keep the salamander in it."

Brie did precisely that, then held the second jar toward Hagrid who tipped the salamander into it. "Thank you both. This fire will make my 'crazy' outdoor trips much easier, Minerva. I can use it when no one is looking," she said, looking at the salamander scampering through the flames. "I think I'll call him Blaze." Hagrid grinned as she put down the jars and picked up Flitwick's present, which turned out to be a lavender quill.

"It has a Quick Quotes charm on it," Flitwick explained, "Just balance it on a piece of parchment and you can dictate to it. Most wizards and witches can just think about what they want to write and the quill will scratch it out, but I'm pretty sure you will have to talk to it."

"Wow, this will come in handy when I want to take notes but have a handful of snake keeping me busy, thank you Filius." Brie twirled the quill between her fingers as she reached out and picked up Albus' present, saying, "I have been dying to find out what is in this one since I saw the paper." After carefully removing the paper and lifting the top off the box underneath, Brie pulled out a backpack with three bright cartoon like flowers on the front. She giggled when she saw it, saying "This is cute Albus."

"Wait, I put a special charm on the flowers, watch." He placed his finger on one, causing it to spin merrily like a pin wheel, right there on the fabric.

"Cool!" Brie exclaimed. "Will it work for me?" she asked, already reaching toward a second flower which started to spin as soon she touched it. "Awesome!"

"I also put an undetectable extension charm on it so it is much bigger inside than it seems from the outside, and you can fit much more in it than you normally could, it won't get too heavy either."

"Oh, no way," she scoffed as she unzipped it and reached in. Her arm disappeared right up to the shoulder. "Whoa," she said looking very impressed as she pulled her arm back out and peered inside.

Albus continued, "And, finally, only the owner can use the magic, so you can put anything inside without fear of someone else being able to open it."

Brie looked at him with an open mouth. "You can really do that? Geeze I learn something new here everyday. I'm not sure my brain can handle much more."She looked at the backpack again saying, "This is my new hiking pack, absolutely."

"Well," said Poppy as Brie moved on to the gift she had brought, unwrapping three small clear jars, one filled with a pinkish paste, another filled with a yellowish goo, and the third marked 'Dittany'. "In keeping with the apparent theme of items you can use while doing your crazy Muggle things, those are bruise-healing paste and Murtlap essence and Dittany. The paste obviously vanishes bruises and the Murtlap essence heals cuts and abrasions, the Dittany heals bigger wounds, but don't go thinking it will regrow your arm or anything drastic like that. You always return in the fall with so many scratches and scrapes and bruises, there's no need really. I remembered the huge bruise on your elbow at the beginning of this year and thought these might be useful. How did you get that awful thing anyway?"

"Slipped on some slimy rocks, trying to wade across a river, broke my fall with my elbow," Brie answered as she examined the jars. "This is great Poppy, I'll probably use them all up this summer." She placed them carefully inside her new backpack and moved on to the last present. "I've stopped trying to guess what is inside all these since I haven't been remotely close." she joked as she unwrapped a wooden box with dragons carved into the top and sides and examined it with delight. "This is really pretty Severus," she said as she turned toward him with a smile.

He nodded in acknowledgment. "I think you will find it fits in with the accidental theme."

Brie lifted the lid, revealing several vials of potions in various colors, each neatly labeled in Severus's handwriting. There were four vials each of red blood replenishing potion and turquoise invigoration draught, three murky purple vials labeled wound-cleaning potion, and one tiny unlabeled vial filled with a bright molten gold liquid.

"What is this one called?" she asked, holding up the tiny golden vial, noticing that everyone's attention snapped to her hand in a kind of silent wonder.

"Felix Felicis," Severus answered. "Liquid luck. I thought it might be useful in an emergency. That is enough for twelve hours of successful endeavors."

Stunned and at a loss for words, Brie placed all the vials back in the carved box and slid the box into her new backpack. "I can't believe you brewed all this for me. Thank you." She wanted to hug him but knew he wouldn't be happy about it because there we so many other people around, so she didn't.

"Actually the blood replenishing and wound cleaning potions and invigoration draught, were made by my seventh year NEWT students during various class assignments," he confessed. "They are very well brewed, I assure you. The Felix Felicis, I had several vials of in my stores."

"Either way this is great. All these gifts are amazing, this is the best birthday I have had in a long time. Thank you all so much for thinking of me." One of the champagne bottles zoomed over pouring as it went and the glass hovered in front of her. "OK, I really like this spell!" she laughed as she plucked the glass out of the air and took a sip.

As everyone chatted and had cake and champagne, Brie wandered around the room thanking everyone again. They were all keen to tell her more about the gifts they had brought and why they had chosen them for her. Thoroughly delighted, she listened with avid interest and asked a few questions like how to take care of the flitterbloom plant and what to feed Blaze, the fire salamander, and how to put out the bluebell flames since they were waterproof.

Brie couldn't keep herself from grinning most of the time. She suddenly felt very included in the tight knit little staff. Not that they'd ever purposely made her feel like an outsider, but sometimes she felt that it was a bit hard to connect with them across the divide of cultures. The more she learned about magic and the magical world, the more the gap closed, but it wasn't until right then that she'd really felt like a functioning part of their little teacher society.

People started to leave one by one until finally only Albus, Severus, and Brie were left. Albus waved his wand and the office returned to normal. Brie thanked him one last time for his thoughtfulness as she gathered her presents and left with Severus.

"That was so much fun!" she giggled as they carried the presents back to her rooms. "I was totally surprised. Bitis gabonica," she said to the troll in the painting who was wearing a silly pointed birthday hat and holding a bunch of balloons. "You're going to stay like that till after my birthday aren't you?" she asked the troll, who grinned a crooked yellow grin and nodded. Brie sighed.

The door opened and they entered the drawing room, placing the presents on a side table. Brie instantly unzipped the backpack and pulled out the carved box filled with potions from Severus and the jars of bruise cream, Murtlap essence, and Dittany from Poppy. "Severus, thanks again for the potions. You have no idea how handy they will be." She flipped the lid back and shifted the vials around to make room for the jars, then closed the lid again. "There, now I have my own magical first aid kit," she said happily.

Severus watched her examine her gifts as he reached into his pocket. "I have one last thing for you," he began as he pulled his hand out again. "I didn't think to add this until after I had wrapped the rest of it." He opened his hand to reveal a small stone lying on his palm. "This is a beazor. It is a powerful protector against most poisons."

Brie took the little stone and examined it. "What about snake bites?"

"Even snake poison." he replied.

"Venom." she corrected automatically. "How do I use it?"

"All you have to do is swallow it," he explained. "It will counteract the poison of any snake."

"Venom," she corrected again. That's it?" she asked skeptically, slipping the stone into her pocket. "No splinting and bandaging, no hospital, no anti-venom?"

"That's it. It's very simple." He hunched his shoulders and added gruffly. "After your memory the other night... and then earlier this week, when you were talking about the summer and the cobras ...I thought... I thought it would be good for you to have one. Just in case."

Smiling and giving him a sideways squeeze-hug, she joked. "Aww Severus, are you starting to worry about me? You don't have to you know, I go into all my crazy Muggle adventures very well prepared." She gestured to the drawing room where every surface was covered by maps, diagrams, stacks of notes, and open books. "I'm very thorough and thanks to all my great gifts, this trip will be even better."

"I would say so." He stepped over to the desk and glanced down at a large map. There was a fat red line drawn on it following along a river. Every so often it would wander off into a patch of green but then it always meandered back to the thin blue line that was the water. Switching his attention to one of the stacks of notes, he picked up and read the top sheet, which Brie already knew by heart, but had copied down anyway to really cement the knowledge.

**Malayan Pit Viper - body covered with triangular brown markings arranged neatly across the back - regarded as causing the most fatalities in Peninsular Malaysia - Highly aggressive - Hemotoxic venom, used in anticoagulant studies**

**Leaf-Nose Viper- uncommon species - semi-arboreal and thick-bodied. Males vivid green/females greyish brown to yellowish green – Highly aggressive – Hemotoxic venom**

**Blue Krait - easily mistaken for wolf snakes - broad white and black bands, squarish head and muzzled snout – Jekyll/Hyde complex day/night - Nerurotoxic venom**

**Banded Krait - easily mistaken for wolf snakes - chevron-like pattern on head – Jekyll/Hyde complex day/night - Nerurotoxic venom**

"Jekyll and Hyde complex?" he asked as he stopped reading and replaced the list on the top of the stack.

"Tame during the day, super aggressive at night," Brie answered as she placed her new plant on the window sill and started to search for a place to put the jar holding the fire salamander, finally setting it down on the mantel. "I'm not going to be able to bring either of these back with me," she said wistfully, looking in at the tiny salamander. "I'll have to see if Lully will take care of them during the summer."

She shifted several maps and books off the sofa and invited him to sit down. After he had joined her, she reached around and snagged yet another list off the table behind him. Glancing at it she said, "This summer is actually going to be pretty decent. Evan managed to keep everything in a pretty localized area. We are releasing and collecting species in Indonesia, Thailand, and Brunei and filming while releasing and collecting in Malaysia. Should take about a month. I might actually spend more than two weeks at home this year." She smiled and tossed the list onto another stack of papers. "He did a great job planning everything, I should bring him back something cool. Do you think I could find anything like the backpack Albus gave me in Hogsmead?"

He considered and answered, "Perhaps some type of much smaller pouch, but I doubt you would find anything larger."

"Oh. Is that why he put all the spells and charms on it himself?" she asked with interest as she picked up the backpack and sent all three flowers spinning.

"No," he replied, watching her delight at the magic. "He mentioned that he found it while passing by some Muggle shop and liked the flowers." He smirked and added, "They reminded him of you apparently. He cast the spells for the flowers and charmed it so only you can open it. I suggested the undetectable extension charm. I thought it might prove useful."

"That's the best part!" she exclaimed as she stilled the flowers and unzipped the top to peer inside. "I think I could fit in there." Giggling, she plunged her upper body inside and disappeared up to the waist "Echo echo echo," she called from inside the bag.

She heard Severus snort out a chuckle. "Only you," he said.

"Could you come with me to Hogsmead sometime before the end of the term? I want to find something to give Evan that looks non magical so he doesn't have to hide it." She pulled herself back out of the bag again. "Last year I brought him back some of that Drooble's gum but I forgot to mention that the bubbles stick around for a few days. He was pretty pissed. This year I'm going to bring him back some of those jelly beans that taste like everything." She grinned wickedly. "That ought to be fun to watch. I want to bring him something else this year too. Something he can keep."

He thought for a minute before replying, "I suppose I could come with you but I don't know how much help I will be having never met him."

"I don't really need help finding a gift, it's more that I'd like someone with me to tell me what different things are. I hate having to ask about everything, it makes me feel like I have 'MUGGLE' written here." She made a slashing motion with her thumb across her forehead. "I can ask Minerva if you don't want to go."

"I need some things from the apothecary and Dervish and Bangs," he said with a shrug. "We could go this weekend."

"Excellent." She grinned. "You know, you would like Evan." Her face lit up as she had a seemingly brilliant idea. "Severus, you should come visit me over the summer, after we finish filming! We'll be back way earlier than usual, so for once we won't have to work non stop at Venom Lab." Brie clasped her hands together in delight. "I can show you the facility and all the animals, and you can meet Evan and some of my staff. I'll show you how to extract venom if you want. There are always a ton of snakes that need milking." She barreled on, "It will be fun! You should come. Do you want to?"

"Perhaps." He started slowly, looking a bit uncomfortable with the idea. He put his hands in the pockets of his robes and she was pretty sure he was uncertain of what to say next.

"Oh yeah, you don't have to decide now," she said, hoping to relieve the obvious stress the question had brought him. She should have known better than that. "Evan should be sending me the summer work schedules soon. I could schedule it so that its just him and me there if you want. At least two people have to be on together, for safety." She picked up a book and opened it at random, wanting to seem nonchalant. "Think about it for awhile, it could be fun," she said in what she hoped sounded like a casual tone. "I'd love to show you my world."

The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea. Never mind the fact that she would love to show him what she had lived and breathed for countless years before she had essentially left it to come to Hogwarts. She thought it would be a really good idea for him to have some sort of distraction this summer because she had a feeling that he was going to be thinking about Harry Potter more and more as the new school year got closer.


	8. Chapter 7: End of Term

**AN: Thanks to Ghostwriter71 for the continued reviews. I loves 'em. I'd love to hear from more of you guys if anyone has a moment to leave one of their own.**

7- End of Term

As the end of term grew closer, Severus found that his thoughts kept turning toward Brie's invitation to come visit over the summer. She hadn't mentioned it again directly.

They had gone to Hogsmead together and he had helped find a gift for her friend. She had been correct in assuming she wouldn't need Severus to actually help her decide what gift would be good, she really had just needed him there to tell her what things were. As they had searched through the shops she told him various stories about Evan and their adventures and close calls. She also spoke of Arizona and her home and work. He had a feeling she was trying to get him accustomed to hearing and thinking about her 'other life', as he had gotten into the habit of referring to it in his head.

She had always told stories about her wild adventures but had never before gone into this much detail about the who, and where, and why of them. He realized that over the past two school years he hadn't asked much about her Muggle life. He'd been slowly overcoming his extreme dislike of Muggles... or at least one Muggle, but he still disliked Muggle culture enough to not even really think to ask her much about what she did and how she lived. Pretty much all the information he'd received over the course of their budding friendship had been volunteered by Brie in idle conversation. He could look back on the past two years and see the string of personal stories she'd told him, the telling sparked by one event or another in the present.

When Icarus had returned with the information about work and holiday schedules, she had casually mentioned that she would probably be done filming in late July and would therefore be back home for the entire month of August. She had just as casually informed him that for the first two weeks in August only she and Evan would be working because she had given all her employee's two weeks paid holiday. Well, Brie had said vacation...but he didn't like how that sounded. Americans and their funny words.

Also, apparently Albus knew a safe Apparation point within her facility so that he could come and collect her at the beginning of the year and bring her back at the end of it. All fascinating little tid bits of information dropped randomly into daily conversation. He didn't have the heart to smirk at what he was fairly certain were her attempts at sneakiness.

The school year ended with the usual flurry of study and exams and the end of year feast. After the students boarded the train for King's Cross, the professors departed by using the floo network or Apparating once they were off Hogwarts grounds, a few flew off on their broomsticks. Severus himself chose to Apparate, but first, he'd go say goodbye to Brie.

"Have a good summer Severus," Brie said as she packed. Albus would be taking her home later that night. "Check this out. I fit everything in my birthday backpack!" She reached in and pulled her guitar case partway out. "I even got the guitar in there! How great is that?" she exclaimed as she shoved the case back in and tossed one last stack of maps and notes in after it before taking a last look around. "Well that's it."

He ran a hand over his hair nervously, not sure how to bring up the subject of a summer visit. _'She hasn't __directly __mentioned it again...maybe she changed her mind. __All that other stuff __really __could have been idle conversation,__'_ a little voice in his head nagged before he told it to shut its gob. "Be careful...you know...doing everything you do."

She laughed and swatted at his arm. "There are large chunks of time during the summer in which I don't risk my life."

"Yes, I know," he replied, "but they are in between large chunks of time where you do." He swallowed hard, it was now or not at all. "Perhaps there would be less time to endanger your life if you were to have a visitor for a few days."

"What makes you think that I wouldn't just risk that life as well?" she teased.

"Everything you've told me so far about your work," he replied. "I was considering your suggestion and thought perhaps it would be...interesting." He trailed off unsure of what to say next.

"Oh well, if its going to be interesting, then by all means you simply must come," she said in her best proper British accent before laughing at the look he leveled at her,and ruining the effect. "You're such a geek sometimes Severus. So is that your way of saying you'd like to come visit me this summer?"

"If the invitation still stands, then, yes I think so." He felt himself blush and wondered if there would ever be a time when his complexion wouldn't betray him. _'Why is it,' _he wondered to himself, '_that I was able to hide important information from the Dark Lord but I almost constantly blush like a first year girl when Brie and I talk?' _

She broke into his thoughts before he had a chance to really dwell on the subject again. "Well, I'll tell you what, think about it for a while longer. Send an owl when you make your decision and you can pop in whenever you feel like it during the couple of weeks that Evan and I are alone running the place. How does that sound?"

"Simple enough. You mentioned Albus knows a safe Apparation point within your facility?"

"Yep. Usually you would have to Apparate in sometime after eight to be sure the staff is gone for the night, but since it will just be me and Evan, you can show up any ole' time y'all want," she answered, adding a southern accent to the last bit. "Just make sure that you let me know roughly when you plan to pop in so that I am around that day."

"Do you keep saying 'pop in' because you are trying for a joke?" he asked

"Maybe," she replied with a smile. "Do you think its funny?"

"I suppose it could be viewed as funny," he said grudgingly, knowing that she occasionally liked to give him a random hard time, and that this was probably one of those times.

"Then I suppose it could be viewed as a joke."

Severus huffed out an exasperated breath and Brie chuckled some more, then asked, "So, any special plans this summer?"

He grimaced and said snidely, "To enjoy the peace and quiet away from this school full of insufferable little dunderheads."

She raised her eyebrows. "Well, glad to see that you love your job." There was a pause while she zipped up her backpack and as she did Severus noticed something missing from her usual appearance. "Well, at least let me know if you get tired of the peace and quiet. I can assure you that in my line of work there is very little of either commodity."

"I'm sure peace and quite will eventually turn to boredom," he answered absently then pointed to her left hand where, on the ring finger, there was a circle of skin slightly paler than the rest. "You are missing your rings."

"What?" she asked as she absently looked at her left hand. "Oh, right," she said as she realized what he was talking about, and pulled a long gold chain from the neck of her shirt. Two small rings and one larger one sparkled as they dangled from the end.

The larger one must be Rogan's. Severus hadn't known that she wore Rogan's ring around her neck. He briefly wondered why he had never thought about what was on the end of the chain she always wore, but kept tucked into her shirt.

"After all of our story telling last month and how I couldn't..." she trailed off, blushing. "Well I though it was time to wear them someplace else." Shrugging, she continued to look down at the little pale ring of skin on her left hand. "Moving on is hard," she muttered mostly to herself.

He didn't know what to say and after an awkward silence Brie cleared her throat and asked, "Are you Apparating home?"

"Yes," he replied, grateful for the change of subject. "Dumbledore is taking you home by Side-Along Apparation isn't he?"

She shuddered. "He always uses that Side Along deal and I hate it. It makes me feel like I'm being smashed through a keyhole."

"You get used to it," he said with a smirk

"Not if you only do it a few times a year," she countered, mirroring his smirk.

"I suppose not," he relented, never having thought of that point before. "I'm going to go talk to Albus about that Apparation point. Be careful this summer."

"Yes, MOM!" she grumbled. "And you, don't dwell on next year all summer. OK?"

"Yes, Mom," he parroted as his lips quirked upward and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder to give her a quick sideways squeeze before leaving her rooms and heading toward Albus' office. She giggled as he left. She'd told him once that his 'hugs' were always so brief and almost matter of fact. It amused her.

As he strode toward the Headmaster's office, Severus tried to squash the worry he was feeling about Brie's chosen summer activities. She had been working with dangerous animals long before they had met and she was still alive, so she must know what she was doing, but he still couldn't help but feel a little apprehensive after hearing her reel off all of Malaysia's most dangerous creatures like she was reading a mildly interesting newspaper article. "Acid pops," he said to the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmaster's office. The gargoyle jumped out of the way, revealing the familiar moving spiral staircase which he stepped onto and rode to the top.

"Ah, Severus," Albus said as he opened the office door and invited him inside. "What brings you for a last minute visit?" He strolled around to the other side of his desk and, with his tongue in his cheek, offered the bowl of lemon drops. Severus, as always, declined.

"I needed to ask you about the Apparation point in Professor Waters' facility," he said, hoping the old wizard wouldn't ask many follow up questions. Albus looked up at him upon hearing the question and Severus cursed inwardly because he had that damn twinkle in his eye.

"Planning an educational summer visit to our Professor Waters?" he asked, looking like he was trying not to smile. "She was kind enough to grant me a tour of her facility at the end of her first year at Hogwarts. I found myself thoroughly impressed."

Severus hunched his shoulders and said, in what he hoped was an indifferent tone, "I was considering it. She mentioned something earlier in the year. I thought it might be interesting." He cleared his throat. "Of course she will be away in July so there is still a month to consider a visit."

"You should go," Albus said immediately. "I've been watching you this year, Severus. I know what is bothering you and I think a distraction would be a good thing." He paused before adding, "I know next year will be hard for you and I'm sorry for it."

Severus felt his temper rise. "I don't need your sympathy, Albus. I will be fine. The Apparation point please?"

He sighed and gave in, "Alright then. Should I get the Pensivie?"

Severus shrugged and held up his wand. "This would be faster.," he said while raising a challenging eyebrow.

"Oh alright," Albus relented as he took a seat. "Make it quick."

Severus pointed his wand at Albus and looked into his eyes. "Legilimens," he said and seconds later his mind was full of his memory of the little room in Brie's facility, and nothing else. Severus knew from the lack of bits of other memories in Albus' mind that he was using Occlumency and hiding everything but the information in question. With a scowl, he cancelled the spell. "Thank you Albus," he said as he rose to leave. "I hope you have a good summer."

"And you as well Severus," he replied with a look of concern on his face that Severus chose to ignore as he left the office and strode through the castle toward the entrance hall. Now that he knew the physical location and had a picture of the Apparation point in his mind, he would be able to visit Brie at any time.

Scowling as he remembered Albus' comment about a distraction being good for him, he left through the main entrance and made his way toward the gates that marked the edge of Hogwarts grounds. _'Meddling old codger always has his nose in someone's business,' _he thought to himself as he contemplated the Occlumency shield that he'd encountered in his mind. _'Don't like anyone in your business though, do you?' _He exited through the main gates and turned on the spot into the temporary crushing darkness, reappearing almost instantly in the drawing room of the old house at Spinner's End.

The bright afternoon sun was diffused by the drawn curtains giving the windows an odd blazing look in the stale dusty semi gloom. He drew his wand and waved it in the direction of the sunlight, causing the curtains to pull back and the windows to open. Another wave of his wand and all the collected dust in the room vanished. Reasonably pleased with his house keeping he walked into the kitchen and gave it the same wand treatment as the drawing room. Grabbing his bags, he headed upstairs to his room to unpack.

As he shifted aside a stack of undershirts to make room for socks, he unearthed the sole picture of Lily he possessed. It was a Muggle photograph of himself and Lily the summer when they were ten, she had given it to him inside a birthday card when he had turned fifteen. In the picture both he and Lily were gripping ice cream cones and grinning into the camera with their arms around each others shoulders. Staring at the picture clutched in his hand he sighed and dropped down to sit on the bed. He remembered the day this was taken, but even stronger was the memory of the day Lily had given it to him.

_They met in secret in the Astronomy tower as they had every year on each of their birthdays. He had arrived first and stood looking at the stars with his hands in the pockets of his robes, __watching his breath make little white puffs in the air__. _

"_Happy Birthday, Sev," Lily said as she came up behind him and held out a small package and a card._

_Taking the offered package, he watched as the moonlight fell across her face and cast a silvery glow on her red hair. "Thank you," he replied __as he stood,__ holding the beribboned __package __and looking__ at her._

"_Well," Lily laughed, __her breath coming out in a white cloud that drifted away like a ghost in the breeze.__ "__a__ren't you going to open it?"_

_He jumped in surprise and embarrassment as he said, "Oh..yes," and started to pull one end of the curly ribbon. _

"_Wait," Lily stopped him. "You open the card first."_

"_Of course," __h__e replied and switched his attention to the card. As he opened it several small pale birds __flew__ out and vanished into thin air as they darted away._

_Lily giggled as the birds vanished. "I worked on that charm for a week. Did you like it?"_

"_It was fantasti__c," h__e said with a smile while examining the picture that had been inside the card._

"_I found that in my room over Christmas break and though you might like to have it." __S__he shrugged as she looked at the picture over his shoulder. "Things were much more simple then, weren't they, Sev?"_

_He chose to ignore the veiled reference to their current situation. Lily was always trying to warn him against the people in his House. "May I open the gift now?" he asked in a tone that he hoped didn't betray his aggravation at her former comment._

"_Of course," Lily answered, __flinching at the__ slightly waspish quality to his tone._

_He pulled away the wrapping paper and lifted the lid off the box underneath, revealing a silver knife with a handle that was caved with moons and stars. Smiling as he lifted it out of the box to examine the handle more closely, he said, "This is wonderful. Thank you, Lily."_

_She smiled. "It seemed like a good knife for potion work. You can think of me whenever you use it."_

"_I will," __h__e said as he looked toward her again. The cloud that had slipped over the moon while he had been examining the knife moved away as he turned. Once again moonlight washed over Lily's face and hair making it seem like she was glowing. Severus's mouth __went__ dry and he nearly, very nearly, confessed everything that was in his heart._

"_I'm glad we are still friends, Sev," Lily said with a smile. "I was worried when we were sorted into separate houses during first year."_

_The words died in his throat at the sound of 'friends'. He swallowed painfully before replying uncomfortably, "Thank you again for the wonderful gift. I really will think of you whenever I use it."_

He had too. Although since Lily's death the silver knife could most often be found in his personal supply cupboard, still in the box he had received it in. He didn't use it often because, true to his word, he would always think of Lily when he did and the memories were often bittersweet. It was the last birthday present that Lily had ever given him. By the end of that year he had called her a Mudblood and she had given up and walked away from him.

Feeling a melancholy mood rolling in on him like a fog, he gave up on manually unpacking and waved his wand once again, causing all his possessions to fly into their proper places. _'This is what I get for doing things like a Muggle,' _he thought to himself as he turned and wandered out of the room, still holding the picture.

This happened to him every summer. With no lessons and detentions and students to distract him he'd always start dwelling on Lily. Usually it took him a little longer to get around to, but when faced with his only photograph of her so soon after arriving home...

As he wandered through the rest of the house he occasionally waved his wand causing dust to disappear and windows to open. Making his way back to the kitchen, he put the kettle on to boil then pulled out a chair, sat at the table and continued staring at the picture of Lily. He lost himself so quickly in memories and self loathing that he didn't notice right away when the kettle began to shriek.

Finally cluing in to the piercing whistle after a minute or two, he dropped the picture onto the table, where it landed face down, and shoved his chair back. He rose and turned off the flame under the shrieking tea kettle, turning away without pouring a cup. He walked away toward a door on the other side of the room which opened onto a steep fight of stairs leading down to his basement potions lab.

As he descended the stairs, he rolled up his sleeves. The tea kettle's shriek had jolted him back to the present and he knew from past summers experience that he couldn't sit and brood all summer because it would accomplish nothing but making his already greasy locks even lanker, dropping weight from his already gaunt frame and souring his already abysmal mood. In other words, piling bad on top of bad. One surefire way to temporarily take his mind off the past was to give himself something to do in the present.

Going directly to a large cabinet, he began to gather the proper ingredients to prepare the Wolfsbane potion. So far he had been unsuccessful in his efforts to brew the new and difficult potion but his last attempt had been very promising.

Pushing aside a jar of doxy eggs in search of the monkshood, he unearthed a familiar battered box. He hesitated slightly before pulling it out and lifting the lid to reveal the silver knife with the carved handle. With a growl of frustration, he dropped the lid back onto the box and shoved it back into the corner of the cupboard. He didn't need any more memories today.

Many hours later he had finished adding ingredients and left the cauldron to simmer. In twenty hours he would know if this attempt had been successful. After putting all the unused ingredients away he turned toward the stairs and left the lab. As he opened the door to the kitchen, he was surprised to see that the sun was slowly rising over the horizon. He hadn't realized that he had been working for so long.

Waving his wand and causing all the windows and drapes he had opened earlier to close, he wearily climbed the stairs to his room. Dragging his robes over his head and tossing them toward a chair, he tumbled into bed still in the slacks and shirt that he had been wearing underneath. He had gotten into the habit of wearing Muggle clothing under his robes after James Potter had used his own spell to humiliate him so badly, so long ago. Right before he fell asleep he hoped that he wouldn't dream that night. Mercifully, he didn't.

When he woke, hours later, the light was as dim as when he had fallen asleep. He rose with a groan and stretched his arms to the ceiling before stepping over to the window to pull back the curtains with one hand, cursing when he saw the sun. It was, seemingly, in the same position as when he gone to sleep, meaning he had slept all day and would be up all night. As he let go of the curtain he noticed that his sleeves were still rolled up to his elbows from when he'd been brewing the previous night. Catching sight of his left forearm, he rolled them down with a little hiss of impatience. The Dark Mark might be faded, but it was still visible so he almost always kept his arms covered.

Seeing the Mark made him think of the day he had told Brie about Lily and the Death Eaters and the rest of it. Well, most of the rest of it. He'd omitted certain details about his home life at the time and also the extreme extent of the Marauder's terrorizing and a few other bits here and there. When he had told about all the Dark Lord's followers being branded with the Mark, he had expected her to ask to see it, but she hadn't. He hadn't really thought about it at the time because he had wanted to finish the story as quickly as possible, but she had merely nodded and her eyes had slid briefly to his left arm, but she had not interrupted.

As he made his way to the kitchen he wondered what Brie was doing now. He knew she was in Arizona at this point because she had mentioned that she would have a day or two to pack before leaving for Malaysia. As he put the kettle on to boil he tried to figure out the time difference between them. To the best of his recollection Arizona was seven or eight hours behind, so it must be somewhere around noon there. Brie was probably elbow deep in some kind of venomous creature by this point in the day. Smiling to himself at the thought, he opened a few cupboards and got out the makings for his tea.

His stomach grumbled crossly as he set out the single cup and saucer. He didn't feel like going out to get food, so he walked over to another cupboard, pulled out a vial full of blue liquid, uncorked it, and drank it in one gulp. Almost instantly the discomfort in his stomach melted away. He would wait until later to deal with the food situation.

The picture of Lily was still where it had fallen, face down on the table, and as he sat drinking his tea Severus tried to put it out of his mind. This had been easy last night as he had had the potion brewing to keep his mind engaged, but now with nothing to occupy him, it was much harder.

He finished his tea and set the cup near the sink. As he wandered out to the drawing room, wondering how to kill the few hours until he could check the simmering potion, his eyes fell on the stack of books he had set down last night while unpacking. The book Brie had lent him was on top. He hadn't had the time to read it during the school year so she had told him to take it home over the summer.

Reading would be as good a way as any to fill the next few hours so he took a seat in front of the dark cold fireplace. As soon as he opened the book a picture fell out and fluttered to the floor. Curious, he bent over to pick it up. It was a Muggle photograph of several people buried up to their shins in mud holding a very long very heavy bodied snake stretched out across their arms.

He pulled out his wand and lit it so he could study the picture in greater detail. He picked out Brie right away. Shortest of the lot, she was buried to her knees rather than her shins. She, like everyone else, was grinning widely and covered from head to toe in mud. He also recognized Rogan, standing to Brie's left, tall and sandy haired. Severus looked closely at Brie, wondering when this was taken. He got his answer as he flipped over the picture. On the back, in writing he didn't recognize, were the words:

**Belize, summer 82' - Steve, Jill, Evan, Brea, Rogan, Erik. Green anaconda 20 ft.**

Flipping the picture over again he peered at the man standing on the other side of Brie. If the names on the back of the picture were in order, then this man was Evan, Brie's closest and most trusted friend. Taller than Brie by a foot or more, he seemed to have very blond hair, but it was hard to tell since most of it was covered in mud.

Still glancing down, Severus rose, went over to the mantle and propped the picture up against a vase. After a moments hesitation he cursed under his breath and retrieved Lily's picture from the kitchen and propped it up on the other end of the mantle.

"Incendio" he muttered while pointing his wand at the fireplace. Flames leaped to life, lighting the darkening room. Still staring at the pictures, he returned to his chair, picked up the book again and began the story. Every so often he would glance up at the two pictures, then continue to read.

As he got further and further into the story he sometimes recognized ideas and phrases from Brie's recounting. Sometimes he could almost hear a guitar playing in the back of his mind. His eyes started to ache as he reached the part of the story where the young witch left school, so he put the book down and checked the time. There were still a few hours before the potion in the basement was finished simmering.

Looking around the room for something to hold his attention, his eyes once again fell on the picture of himself and Lily. _'Not again,'_ he said to himself. _'Brooding won't do any good.'_ He shifted his attention to the picture of Brie and her colleagues. "Accio," he said, pointing his wand toward the photograph, causing it to zoom off the mantle and into his hand. He gazed at the mud covered Brie, frozen forever with her eyes sparkling and her smile wide.

Lily had had a big happy smile too. When it was genuine. He could remember the feeling of always wanting to do something that would make her smile at him. Her smile had always felt like sunshine on the insides for him. Just this bright glowing ball of warmth that started in his chest and spread through his whole body. It had been like that since he had first seen her. Even after she had broken off their friendship he would sometimes catch a glimpse of her smiling or laughing with her friends and he'd feel a ghost of that warm glow. In those later school years it had always made him sad and angry that she'd given up on him, rather than making him feel good inside.

He shook his head and tried again to push Lily out of his mind. It depressed him further to think that he'd been getting progressively more bitter since he had been fifteen years old. He forced his attention to Brie's picture again. Though she was prone to grin, Severus had never seen Brie quite like she was here. At first he thought it was just her hair - usually that funny, dirty kind of golden, kind of rusty type color that he didn't have a name for - which was so muddy you'd have thought it was brown. He looked closer and realized that there was something different in her smile now and in her eyes too. Frowning slightly, he squinted and looked even closer, wondering what else about her had changed since this picture had been taken. Aside from the dead husband and family, of course.

He thought about what had changed in himself after Lily had died. Had anything? He had been dissatisfied with his life before and, if anything, more dissatisfied directly after. He had been unable to prevent her death despite everything he had done. Come to think of it, he wasn't all that satisfied right now. Now, he was bound to protect her son whom he had never laid eyes on, and while he may be Lily's son he was also James'.

Severus got to his feet with a little sound of impatience and placed the picture back on the mantle as he left the room to brew more tea. The further he got from the picture, the further Brie got in his mind. He'd been hoping to have at least a few peaceful days at home before having to start trying to sort things out, but that wasn't going to happen._'How to handle Harry Potter?'_ he finally thought to himself since it seemed his mind would alight on nothing but the blasted Potter's for long.


	9. Chapter 8: Wild Waters

**AN: Thanks to Ghostwriter71 for the review on the last chapter. Don't worry, you go ahead and stalk away. It's motivating. Good to see the new favs and follows as well. I'd love to hear from you with a review. More reviews usually means faster chapters as I tend to put aside more time to work on them when I know people are waiting for a new one.**

8- Wild Waters

Brie hacked her way through the dense green jungle underbrush with her machete. There were scratches covering her arms and legs, twigs in her hair, she was drenched with sweat and completely in her element. She had come to truly enjoy the feeling of knowing what she was doing and what was going on around her, because at Hogwarts she was surprised and baffled by something pretty much everyday. Every once and awhile it felt good to be in a place where up was up and water was water no matter where you were or who you were with.

The film crew followed behind lugging the mass amount of equipment needed for documentary making. Not that she really liked to call what she did documentary making. She preferred to say she was making educational nature films. Some people might argue that one was pretty much the same as the other, but she felt her term was much less pretentious for some reason.

She and Rogan had made their first films together to try to educate people about wildlife and to hopefully sell them to the local media to try and make a bit of money to fund their ultimate dream: their own reptile facility. Well, it had mostly been Rogan's dream but Brie wouldn't have stood in it's way for all the world.

After she had met Rogan, most of the planned out parts of her life had completely changed. Before they had met she had been considering a career as a doctor, or maybe a teacher, or something in research, or maybe even music. Venom and reptiles had been just about the furthest thing from her mind but Rogan had the special gift of enthusiasm for his interests and Brie's imagination had been captured by the possibilities that venom had in the medical field, so somewhere along the way she'd added her new dreams to his old ones and they had come up with the idea of a venom research lab fronted by a reptile education facility. Milking the snakes and selling venom had kind of been a natural avenue to explore when discussing funding and operation fees for the project.

"There's gold in them there fangs!" Rogan would oft exclaim.

But before all that, they had to get the whole thing off the ground, so in came the hadn't made films for fame, so she had been thoroughly surprised when they had started to gain popularity with their shaky hand shot footage of their long weekend camping trips where they'd be out picking up anything in sight to make the films as diverse and interesting as possible. Even more surprised when a film company had shown real interest in a series of professional documentaries featuring 'The Wild Waters', as they had been dubbed.

The first few years of their marriage had still been incredibly hectic, with Brie determined to continue her education and help Rogan realize his goals and Rogan determined to make his dreams a reality without getting in the way of Brie's. Being dirt poor newlyweds with thousands of dollars in student loan debt hadn't been fun.

The interest from the filming company had made things easier in some respects and harder in others. They had expected to have to limp along with funding for many more years, so the extra cash was great. They had also anticipated Brie being able to finish school before they would start putting so much time into the project. Looking back, Brie decided that it had only worked out because she and Rogan both had the mutant ability to function without sleep for long periods of time.

If you asked her, Brie wouldn't have changed a thing. She firmly believed that it was the sum of your lifetime experience that shaped you as a person and though her life had been full of hard work and some major sadness... Well, maybe she would change a few things. She wouldn't be as strong as she was now, but she'd have the people she loved and that seemed an OK trade off to her. Love could make you strong just as well as tragedy could.

Rogan's death had boosted her own popularity by quite a bit. The press had had a field day with the story of Rogan, and then the story of her family's tragic deaths six months later. Suddenly she was no longer part of the dynamic duo of 'The Wild Waters', she was a lone survivor trying desperately to overcome the untimely and tragic deaths of her loved ones while struggling to keep the life she knew on track. The press had hounded her for weeks after both incidences, camping on the edge of her property, all trying to get that exclusive interview with the bereaved widow and orphan.

She had been beside herself for weeks and stopped all filming and publicity appearances for over a year after Rogan died, despite threats of litigation for breach of contract from the film company. She funneled all her energy into the facility that they had built together, the facility that they had been collecting the Gaboon viper for when Rogan had died. She would have been absolutely lost if it hadn't been for Evan, who had been a close friend since college.

When they first started discussing staffing, neither Brie nor Rogan would hear of anyone but Evan Conifer to manage the facility and he had jumped at the opportunity, relocating from Oregon. Together the three had designed and built Wild Waters Reptiles, more colloquially referred to by employees as Venom Lab because it 'sounded cooler'. It was a facility dedicated to venom research and extraction, and reptile education. The facility boasted not only an ever growing collection of venomous and harmless reptiles, but also a large viewing and education area where the public could come to learn about all reptiles.

Rogan had liked nothing better than to teach people about what he loved and the education center had been his baby. Brie, with an interest in venom uses in medicine and a Masters and PhD to complete, had stuck mostly to extraction and anti coagulant research in the lab, whenever she had time between school and filming. Conveniently, her thesis centered on her work in the field and research in the lab, since she believed in working smarter, not harder. Evan, with a vast knowledge of many many reptiles, gleened simply from spending time with Rogan and Brie, and a natural way with people, fell right into his managerial role like he had been made for it.

After Rogan died, Brie and Evan had temporarily closed the educational center and relocated all the reptiles there into the lab portion of the building because neither could bear to even think about entering it. After nearly a year they had been working side by side in the lab one day when Brie had said, "I think its time to start making films again. He would have wanted it," at the same moment Evan had said, "I think its time to open the education center again. He would have wanted it." They had started both the very next day, in turns planning a film about local reptiles and a re-opening/dedication of the education center, both in Rogan's memory.

Her life had just started to even out and return to normal, or as normal as it was going to get without Rogan, when Albus had contacted her about a professorship at Hogwarts. Sometimes she suspected that part of the reason she was so keen to do such a strange and daunting thing was because she had been starting to fear that the pain of losing Rogan wasn't going to go away unless she started doing something that they hadn't shared. It made her guilty and she had wrestled with herself over it for a long time before making her final decision.

Brie smiled as she hacked her way through the thick undergrowth. Her contract with the film company was 'nearly' up, she only had to do a few more films before she would be free to use her spare time as she liked. After Albus had contacted her about teaching at Hogwarts, and after she stopped scoffing at the idea that magic really existed, she had fought tooth and nail with the production company about the time line around her filming schedule.

They wanted the films one after the other after the other as fast as possible, but, because of Brie's school, Brie and Rogan's original contract hadn't actually specified a time line as to when they were supposed to provide them with the films. It had only specified the number of films they were to produce. Because they had been happy with the speed at which Brie and Rogan had been filming after Brie finished school, they had never renegotiated and had just added more films to the original terms. They had also neglected to contact her with new terms after Rogan's death.

When she had pointed this out to them, they had fired up their crack team of lawyers and wasted a good amount of her time in deliberation. In the end though, Brie was correct, there was nothing they could do about the time line of the films because of the original contract, so she had avoided being sued for any sort of breach They had required her to sign a new solo contract. She had agreed as long as she was allowed to set the terms of the time line of the films. She had agreed to no less than one a year. 'Nearly' up meant 5 more films, which essentially meant five more years if she kept up this pace.

Her professorship at Hogwarts made life at Venom Lab difficult for her and for Evan in other ways as well and certain sacrifices had been made. Brie completely stopped all her anti-coagulant research and began collecting and releasing around and during filming, steadfastly refusing to rely on others to stock her facility for her. She preferred to know that the specimens she brought home were not further funding the illegal animal trade.

Filming itself had become a marathon event now that she had only four to six weeks out of each year to get it done, always striving for just a few more shots, a few more angles, another species. Evan stopped coming on filming trips and took over contact with the film company, basically becoming her agent on top of essentially running her facility while she was away. After the first year they had hired on more staff to help with the day to day running of things and eventually found a rhythm that worked.

_'Or works well enough,'_ she thought to herself as she climbed over some gigantic tree roots. Evan was doing what he loved and she paid him well for it, but that didn't stop her from feeling guilty from time to time about taking off to basically delight at magic. She loved what she and Evan did, but the allure of real magic had been too much for her and she had been unable to say no to Hogwarts.

Truthfully, she missed Evan a lot when she was away. When they were together he was her best link to a life she had been enjoying immensely and sorely missed. That life seemed further and further away the more time she spent without him. _'Which is probably good.'_ she thought to herself, but it didn't mean she had to like it.

If she wanted to be completely honest with herself, which she did mostly, she knew that while the facility hadn't started out as her personal dream, she'd fight with everything she had to keep it open for Rogan. She believed in what they did there. They helped save lives. Human and animal. It wasn't what she originally had envisioned for herself but she was in it now and would stay in it as long as she could. It was just a good thing that venom and documentaries paid well enough for her to do that and indulge in some folly as well, with no hardship on anyone's wallet.

As she hopped down off the last root, a movement in the bush caught her attention and she was on it with a shout for the camera men who where assigned to follow and film whenever she had to run after anything. She sheathed the machete as she jogged through the underbrush, listening for rustling and keeping her eyes peeled for movement. A flash of green and black ahead of her in the bush and she went for it, pulling out a green spotted lizard with striped arms, legs, and tail. It thrashed in her hands a little.

"Hang on, buddy, hang on. I only need you for three minutes, tops, I promise."

She made her way back to the camera crew, who had fallen behind. "Alright guys set it up," she said and the crew hoisted their cameras onto their shoulders as the sound guy fiddled with the mic pack she already wore at the small of her back.

"Good to go Brie." said Jillian Aru, the director, her pin straight, dark hair covered in tiny sticks and leaves. Sweat slicking her caramel colored skin.

Brie nodded and crouched down so that she could hold the lizard near the forest floor. She listened to Jill count down from five, going silent on two while holding up two fingers, the same with one. Then she pointed silently at Brie, who took her cue and started talking.

"What we have here is the Malayan crested lizard, or _Gonocephalus grandis__. __It _is a common and widespread species across Southeast Asia. You can find these guys in Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Indonesia and Borneo." She turned the lizard toward the camera as she spoke, pointing at various features. "It gets its name from the ribbon-like crests found among males, like this guy here. Now these spots can range from yellow to brown and females are significantly less colorful, also they don't have the crest here. This lizard is diurnal and lives in the rain forest among shrubs and trees where they find and eat little insects." She shifted her weight slightly to let the camera men know she was going to stand, then stood and continued. "We'll just let him go in the brush here and he'll be on his way." She released the lizard and it streaked away.

As she turned back to the cameras something caught her eye on the trunk of a nearby tree. "Oh hey look at this," Brie said to the camera as she darted over to the tree and cupped her hand over a bluish brown gecko with bright orange spots. "These guys are neat," she said as she plucked the gecko off the tree and brought it closer to the camera.

"This is a Tokay gecko, it is one of the largest gecko species in the world. The name 'Tokay' comes from an onomatopoetic description of it's call." Brie grinned into the camera. "How's that for a fancy word, huh?" The gecko obliged her with it's loud call. "And there you go!" she exclaimed with a laugh.

She loved working with animals. "Hey buddy, I'm running the show here, alright? It's color is usually bluish brown, with orange spots. Tokays are fairly robust and large in size. They also boast a feisty temperament." At precisely that moment the gecko trashed around and latched onto Brie's finger. "And there you go!" She laughed again. "This guy has been on camera before, he knows his cues." She pulled the gecko off. "They have some pretty good jaw pressure," she said as she flexed her finger. "Let's just put him back on his tree, and let him get back to his day." She placed the gecko back on the tree and released him when one of the camera men found a good angle to shoot from as it ran away up the trunk.

"Wow," Jill said as she walked up to Brie and handed her a towel so she could wipe gecko poop from her hands. "The animals are out today for you, Brie."

"They really are," Brie said as she handed back the towel and calmly reached over Jill's shoulder to pluck a thin bright green snake covered with black and white markings from the low branches of a small tree. "Over here guys," she called to the camera crew. "Jill got in my shot so I'm going to do a fake pick up."

She grinned at Jill as she moved away, and Jill grinned back. "Count it down Jill." She placed the snake back on the tree where she had found it, keeping a sharp eye on it until Jill was finished with the count and the cameras were rolling.

"And here," she began as she picked up the snake like she had just found it, "we have an Oriental whip snake. Look how skinny and whippy he is. These guys are found throughout Southeast Asia in lowland to mid-level rain forests. They are arboreal snakes so they like climbing trees to feed on geckos, agamids and other small lizards. Their slender bodies and sharp snouts are suited for moving through vines, branches and other jungle foliage like lightning. They are almost perfectly camouflaged as a branch and leaf. " She moved the snake's head closer to the camera and continued, "My favorite thing about these guys are their eyes. Check this out, they have horizontal pupils, while most other snakes have vertical or round pupils. Now I have to be a little careful here because these guys are mildly venomous, but extremely docile. Lets just let him go back up in his tree here, watch how fast he disappears." She released the snake and watched it glide quickly out of sight.

"Alright, lets set up camp here tonight," Jill said when Brie had finished her spiel. "We can do some mission statement shots and probably find more animals."

_'Ugg, the woman is a slave driver,' _thought Brie. "All right, but lets do the mission statement later. I'm done with the cameras for now."

She was in no mood to spend an hour or two filming the opening statement for this film, which involved popping on camera from six dozen different angles and saying over and over, "Hi, I'm Gabrielle Waters and I'm here exploring Malaysia. It's a pretty wild place with some pretty wild animals, lets see what we can find!" after which she would dive off camera again. The missions statement shots were where a good amount of her bumps and scrapes came from each trip. They had filmed a bunch yesterday at a waterfall that they had happened to stumble across. She'd spent about forty minutes sliding down a small part of the falls, and skidding to a stop in front of the camera to deliver her lines, and as a result she had some major scratches on her arms and legs and a huge bruise on her knee. She wanted to find a private place in the brush somewhere so she could use her magical first aid kit.

One of the cameramen came up to her holding out her birthday backpack with the funny flowers. She had tied her sleeping bag to the top like she usually did to avoid suspicion. "I think the zipper is stuck Brie, I couldn't get it to budge."

"Why were you trying to open it?" she asked.

"Because you always bring some sort of goodies with you," he replied.

"For me! Bring your own goodies and stay out of mine!" She pretended to jiggle the zipper on the backpack and pull hard. Of course it unzipped easily because she was the one who was opening it. She reached in and rooted around. "You've been on enough of these trips to know to pack your own stuff." Pulling out a candy bar, she handed it to him, despite her lecture.

He smiled as he took the candy. "That was funny, how you got your arm to disappear to the shoulder! How'd you do that, isn't your bag full?"

"I'm just...umm...super flexible. Go eat your candy." Brie turned quickly and walked away while yelling at herself. _'Be more careful, Waters!' _Shaking her head, she casually walked away from the crew as they started to set up camp. If she left quietly, hopefully no one would follow.

_'Success,' _ she though to herself when she had gotten several hundred yards away. As she looked for a clear spot to sit down, she rummaged in her backpack. She practically had her head inside before she felt the square wooden box she wanted. Sitting and starting with the bruise paste, which she had already made use of, she rolled up the leg of her jeans and slathered some on the huge bruise on her knee. With wonder, she watched it fade away. _'That will always be cool, no matter how many times I see it,'_ she decided as she reached back in the box for the wound cleaning potion and Murtlap Essence, which she had yet to use.

She unstopped the vial and hesitated before tipping a little bit of the potion onto the large gash in the side of her leg. She had been worried that it would sting like alcohol, she didn't expect the large amount of purple smoke that billowed forth from the wound. _'Severus could have warned me about that!'_ she thought as she poured the potion on some of her deeper scratches. Soon she was surrounded in a purple fog, but her arms and legs felt much better.

As she made her way back to the crew, she pulled out the little jar of blue bell flames and slipped it into her pocket. The flames were harder to use without attracting attention. Every night she had to shoo someone away from the fire pit and pretend to get the fire going herself. She was gaining quite the reputation as a fire starter.

She walked back into the clearing where the crew had already set up camp. It seemed like no one was around at the moment. Everyone must have been off having a pee in the brush, scouting out good places to film the mission statement, or washing up in the nearby creek, so Brie jumped at the opportunity to dump the bluebell flames into the fire pit. She immediately scooped some back up and shoved the jar in her pocket again. She had already learned her lesson about scooping up the flames right away rather than trying to do it when it was time to put out the fire.

The first time she had used the flames, one of the cameramen had tried putting them out with water and they kept slowly creeping back to life. Brie had solved the problem by helping him to dump a large amount of water on the flames and shooing him away to go pack up his things. The larger amount of water had kept the flame 'out' long enough for him to walk away. She had quickly scooped up some of the flame in the jar and then piled dirt on the rest as Minerva had instructed her to do to make them go out. Always one to learn from mistakes, she now also filled up the bucket that was kept near the fire with dirt right away, assuring that everyone had been smothering the flames and not continually trying to drown them.

Jill walked out of the brush just as Brie was slipping the jar into her pocket again. "There you are!" Jill exclaimed. "Let's get some footage of you getting the fire...oh shoot, you already got the fire going. How have you been doing that so fast this trip?"

Brie shrugged and rolled her eyes. "I don't know. Could be the ten years of field experience."

Jill shrugged back, not looking convinced then looked at her with suspiciously narrowed eyes. "Your arms aren't as scratched up as they were twenty minutes ago."

"Of course they are, you loon," Brie replied in what she hoped was a voice not laden with guilt. These wizard gifts were proving tougher to hide than she had originally anticipated. Hoping to distract Jill, Brie said, "Well, if you want footage of me starting a fire I can start another one."

"Great!" Jill exclaimed and went over to the pile of equipment near one of the tents and fished around for the right camera. Brie heaved a huge sigh of relief at Jill's back. Distracting her wasn't hard as long as there were scenes that needed filming.

"So how are you going to do it this time?" she asked as she located the camera she wanted and set about making sure there was a tape in it and the lens was clean. "Two sticks? Stick and fire bow? Stick and plank of wood? Something with a stick? Steel wool and a nine volt?" She turned and looked at Brie, who was holding up the magnesium fire starter that she'd pulled from one of her other pockets. Jill frowned. "Oh so that's how you've been doing it so fast. Come on! Anyone can start a fire with one of those."

"I'm anyone."

"Briiiiiieeeeee!" Jill said in a long drawn out whine.

"Jiiiiilllllllllll." Brie parroted back. "It's this or there is no fire starting footage for this film. If you want some footage of me acting like a caveman, we can film me making a sleeping platform for the tent. Which reminds me," She turned to the bit of bush where she assumed most of the crew were and raised her voice. "Why are these tents set up on the ground?"

"It's easier!" Several voices answered in unison, from several different directions.

"Well enjoy your masses of bugs you lazy clods," she called back while turning to Jill again, and speaking in a normal tone. "I'm building a platform off the forest floor, film that if you want, but for fire, I'm sick of using methods that take an hour. People need to know about these magnesium deals just as much as how to start one with a fire bow."

"Fine." Jill relented with a pout. "I guess we've covered all the other methods anyway."

Brie felt bad and added, "If you want, I can set up some traps too. Some dead falls and snares maybe." Jill pouted some more and shrugged, but Brie could tell she was suppressing a smug look because she had gotten her to offer to do more filming. "That pout isn't going to get you anymore than that, you brat. Let's get started before we lose the light and you start bugging me to film with the night vision stuff."

"But the night vision stuff is so cool!" Jill exclaimed with a laugh.

A voice interrupted from the direction that Brie had come from after using her first aid potions. "Hey there's a bunch of purple fog over here guys! Come see!"

Brie had a mild panic attack before calling back, "No one is falling for it, Brian!" Several peals of laughter rang forth from the rest of the crew as they all knew Brian as a big practical joker and not even one of them had moved toward him.

"He's probably standing over there with a big bucket of water to throw on whoever shows up first." Jill chuckled. Much to Brie's relief, Brian the cameraman gave up on getting the crew over to see the purple fog. She just hoped that he didn't have his camera with him to film it. She really was going to have to be much more careful with these wizard items. _'Only use the wound cleaning stuff on windy days.'_ She made a mental note as she started scouting around for all the materials she was going to need for filming.

Brie spent the next few hours letting Jill and the crew film her as she talked to the cameras and took them step by step through starting a fire with the magnesium starter, setting up several kinds of small animal traps that could be made using the surrounding terrain and materials, and finally building a small raised platform layered with brush to elevate the tent, and hopefully cut down on the amount of bugs that would get inside during the night. It was all pretty standard stuff for one of Brie's documentaries. She enjoyed knowing how to do all these things and teaching others how to do them as well. She had no desire to actually live this way like some people did, but in her line of work it seemed kind of stupid not to at least know the basics.

She and Rogan had started to learn these kinds of things after making their very first sponsored film. It had been the first time they had filmed outside the U.S and it had been total hell. In America they had been used to traveling and filming in short bursts around Brie's classes. It turned out that their 'survival' knowledge, which was really more like weekend camping trip knowledge, had been about as useful as a lead parachute when they got into the jungles of Puerto Rico with a filming schedule of more than a month.

Brie and Jill crawled into their tent that night thoroughly tired after a full day of hiking and filming. The film crew had had a dinner of MREs which was always Brie's least favorite part of any trip. It had been the MREs that had made her break down and learn how to trap small animals for food. She drifted off to sleep that night hoping that the few traps she had set would yield some breakfast come the morning.

She woke the next morning to the sound of birds and monkeys and a whirring camera with a bright light on top. "Morning, Miss Gabby Sunshine!" Jill chirped from behind her rolling camera as soon as Brie opened her eyes.

"Oh lord. Jill, please." Brie moaned as she tried to squish herself down in her sleeping bag and out of sight. "Don't call me Gabby," she ordered from within. Jill simply moved to the mouth of the bag, pulled it open, stuck the camera in there with her, and grabbed another to keep filming with.

"It still kills me that the part of that greeting that bothers you is the Gabby part." Jill said as she started to poke through the sleeping bag, eliciting more annoyed groans from Brie. "Come ON! You're the one who has been harping on about getting this sucker filmed quickly. That means early rising."

After several pokes to the ribs, and one to the boobs, Brie exclaimed, "The sun isn't even all the way up yet!" while grabbing the camera and wiggling her way out of the sleeping bag. Once she was mostly out she hoisted the camera onto her shoulder and began to film Jill as Jill filmed her.

"This will be Emmy worthy footage," Jill giggled as she turned off the camera and set it aside. Brie did the same while taking a long look at Jill, noting that she looked pale and had dark circles under her eyes.

"Are you feeling OK, Jilly-bean?" she asked, trying not to sound too concerned. Jill had been battling cancer since childhood. This was her third or fourth remission. Each time they got shorter. If Jill was feeling poorly, Brie would insist that she go home to the doctors and let her handle the rest of the filming herself as she was a fairly capable director. Jill knew this and always tried to hide it when she was under the weather.

Jill huffed out a breath and said moodily. "I'm fine. Don't go all mother hen on me."

"When do you go in for testing again?" Brie ignored the annoyed tone.

"After we get back from this trip. Don't worry."

"Well, you know I love you, but you look like hell," Brie said.

Jill started cleaning camera lenses in an annoyed way. "I was helping to film another project before we took off for this one. I'm getting too old to be tramping around and sleeping in tents. I'm tired is all."

"Jill you aren't supposed to do that! You know you need to rest in between jobs."

"Brie, I'm a big girl and I'm tired of resting half my life. Now let's drop it and work, OK?"

Brie tried to squash her concerns. Jill had been a good friend since Brie's very first sponsored film. She had been the director assigned to the project by the filming company and, after working with her for the first film and a different director for the second, both Brie and Rogan had insisted on working solely with Jill from then on. Jill had been more than happy to accompany them around the world with her camera.

Occasionally Evan would come along to film, complaining that he always got the boring job of staying back at the facility, and he and Jill had struck up a fast friendship and even faster romance. As Jill lived in California and Evan had moved out with Brie and Rogan to the facility in Arizona, the fling had been brief, but it had left them fast friends. Evan often called it jungle love in a tongue in cheek kind of way.

Because of the distance between them, Jill's filming schedules, and Brie's professorship at Hogwarts, Brie didn't get to see Jill nearly as often as she liked these days. The past three years they had only been able to squeeze in time together while filming in the summer and recording the voice over tracks for the film during Brie's Easter breaks from Hogwarts. She was having a hard time not playing mother hen since she had to get all her concerns about Jill out in the month they were spending together on this film.

"So you got me up for sunrise shots, didn't you?" Brie asked as she grabbed her backpack and rummaged around inside for her hairbrush. Luckily is was fairly close to the top and she didn't have to try to delve into the depths of it with Jill watching. Sunrise shots were a particular favorite of Jill's. They consisted of filming Brie walking through different terrains against the rising sun, making her look like a silhouette or a shadow as she moved. These types of shots added depth to the documentaries and were good shots to add voice-over information to.

No, we can't do those in this dense foliage. We're going to have to wait till we get out and more toward the beaches if we want sunrise shots. I got you up for all the dawn feeders," Jill replied, referring to all the species of animal that preferred a very early breakfast.

Brie sighed as she brushed out her hair then bunched it all into a messy bun with an elastic around it to hold it in place. It was easiest to work in conditions like this with your hair up out of your face and off your neck. It was something that the producers of her documentaries hounded her about constantly. They seemed to expect her to tramp around the middle of nowhere, hunting, fishing, and exploring made up like some kind of super model. She told them what she had always told anyone who said she could stand to spruce up her appearance on camera, she was here to educate, not titillate. Let them try to keep bouncy hair and unsmudged mascara while wading through swamps in one hundred percent humidity. Sometimes she really couldn't wait to be done with these films.

"Alright then, let's go." Brie said as she crawled out of the tent and sat on a nearby rock. Before going to sleep the night before she had done what she always did and drove two sticks into the ground so that she could put her boots upside down on them. She'd never simply place them on the ground outside the tent because that was a good way to get venomous spiders, scorpions and snakes in your boots. Nothing would spoil your day faster than a nice scorpion bite to the toes. She didn't take them into the tent either because usually they wouldn't dry out enough by the next day. Wearing wet boots was bad for you too. And really, who wants smelly old boots in their tent?

She pulled the laces loose and checked inside each one before crashing the heel down onto the ground a few times, just for good measure. When nothing came running or slithering out, she put them on and laced them up. She finished just as Jill crawled out of the tent and took her place on the rock to do the same. As Jill was busy checking her boots, Brie went over to the fire pit and examined the bluebell flames which were still going strong in the bed of ashes despite the conspicuous problem of no more wood to burn.

She hastily threw more sticks into the pit and got down on her hands and knees to blow on the flames to make it seem like she had to put a little effort into bringing them back to life. Jill got her boots on and grabbed her camera and began filming Brie as she knelt by the fire pit. As she moved to find a better angle she tripped over some stray roots and stumbled, catching Brie off guard and making her huff out a large breath in surprise, which in turn caused a large puff of ash to rise up and cover her face. Jill regained her balance easily and giggled at Brie's sooty face as she followed her down to the tiny creek to rinse off.

Brie knelt at the edge and splashed some water up to rinse her cheeks. She was just about to turn to Jill and the camera to see if she had gotten all the soot off when she froze, hearing the familiar sound of something slithering over the dead leaves on the ground. She knew the sound of snakes moving over different surfaces almost as well as she knew her own voice and if her ear was worth anything, this was a big one.

"Something is here," she said to Jill while scanning the banks of the creek. "Something big." Jill kept the camera on Brie as she picked up a stick to part a big clump of grass on the bank of the other side. She'd barely brushed it when a giant, black, king cobra reared, hissing, out of the grass with it's hood spread wide. Immediately she wished that she had stood up before reaching over. Hoping to give herself time to stand, Brie dropped the stick she was holding into the water with a splash. The cobra turned it's attention to it momentarily and Brie sprang to her feet and backed up two steps, trying to assess the situation.

She and Jill were both within the cobras striking zone. The thing was huge. It had to be at least eighteen feet long and she'd never dealt with such a big venomous snake before. She'd handled plenty of little ones, in fact, they had just released one that had been living at the facility for a few years, but that one had been only six feet. That was a much more manageable size. She'd have to stand six feet away from this one just to be out of the strike range and right now she and Jill were only four.

Brie started talking to the camera without taking her eyes off the cobra.

"What we have here is a really really large king cobra." She gulped. "Really large. We seem to have caught each other off guard here at this little creek. He has to be at least eighteen feet long. This is about as big as they get. It's really rare to run into one this big. I bet he's tipping the scales toward the top end of the weight range too. Chubby guy." Her breath started to get short as her heart raced. "OK, so right now I'm in a really bad place. These guys can strike about one third their body length so he can easily reach me if he wants to."

Brie abruptly stopped talking as the cobra gave a low warning hiss and rocked forward slightly. After a tense few seconds she started talking again. "And he's cranky. So what I have to do here is very very very slowly back away." Brie started to move back, relieved when Jill started to do the same. "There's no way I'd be able to grab and handle this guy on my own. He's too big, so we'll just keep backing up here little by little."

As they backed away the cobra closed up it's hood but remained balanced on the lower half of it's body. "There we go." Brie whispered. "He's calming down, we're backing up. Everyone's happy here today."

She and Jill inched backward until there was a sizable gap between the camera and the snake. Jill zoomed in and continued to film as the cobra slowly lowered itself to the ground, had a long drink from the small creek, then turned and disappeared in the same direction it had come from. When it had disappeared, Jill turned the camera back to Brie. "He just wanted a drink. This is just a really good reminder about keeping your cool if you're in the habit of getting yourselves into these types of situations."

She finished up breathlessly and made a slashing motion across her neck. Jill lowered the camera. Brie let out a long low whistle while slowly lowering herself to the ground, finally letting the panic hit her. Jill joined her. Neither said anything. It wasn't uncommon to have unexpected encounters with dangerous animals, they both always just needed a minute to collect themselves afterward. After a few minutes Brie rose and brushed off her pants with shaking hands.

"Come on," she said as she helped Jill up. "Let's go check those traps for some breakfast." She started to walk away on slightly rubbery legs. "Umm... don't tell Evan about that OK?"

"He'll see it when the film is done." Jill said as she hoisted her camera up and followed.

"Yeah but I won't be home then." Brie answered and Jill laughed as they picked their way through the brush and to the traps.

_'Just another day in the jungle,' _ Brie thought as she pushed herself along.


End file.
